Now that summer is around the corner, I thought I'd share my experiences with all you other protective mothers who are making summer plans.
This year, I was thinking of sending my daughter abroad to visit her grandparents. I was so excited by the idea that I went ahead and made reservations for a trip five weeks from now. I just assumed that my daughter had a passport because I vaguely recalled getting one along with her Dad several years back. For some reason I thought it had an eternal expiration date, which was dumb of me, because when I looked at the old passport, it had expired.
So there I was with a rapidly upcoming trip, a nonrefundable plane ticket, and an expired passport. In the old days what you'd do in a situation like this was run off to the passport office, pay a little extra money and throw a few slightly ugly passport photos at the situation. However, these days, getting a passport for a child isn't all that easy.
Apparently, after some widely publicized international abductions of children in high conflict custody cases, the government has revamped the rules to make it more difficult for divorced or divorcing parents to obtain a passport so as to transport a child out of the country without the permission of the other parent. This makes sense since so many women have completely lost contact with their children when the foreign nationals they were married to took those children out of the country and their mothers never heard from them again.
On the other hand, if you are a protective mother with an abusive ex husband, the new requirements can make you absolutely miserable, since abusers can use these rules as a means to bully and harass protective mothers further. My situation is a typical example.
The new rules require that both parents come to the passport office together along with their child and sign a document stating they agree to obtain a passport for that child. If one or the other parent is unable or unwilling to go to the passport office with you, then you have to get a signed and notarized document from the absent parent indicating that they agree to obtain a passport for that child.
Of course, if you have an abuser that is simply an opportunity to say what in response to such a request? "No", of couse. If not "no", an abuser can drag you along for weeks with false promises to sign the document soon, very soon. So by the time you realize it is too late and the plane is just about to depart, you don't have time to do anything about it.
Or they will demand you give something up to them, either money or the opportunity to verbally abuse you more in the conversation.
Even if you get what you need from your X, your troubles may not be over. I was able to get the required document, but when the passport did not arrive within the timeframe I expected, I called the National Passport Center. They told me that along with the requirement of the notarized document from my ex which I had provided, they were gratuitously adding the requirement that I fax to them a copy front and back of a photo id of my ex which had to include, they told me, a copy of his signature.
I am like, you have got to be kidding me. After all, in order to get that first document notarized, my ex had to show his driver's license which has his signature on it to the notary public.
Ok, so I didn't say, you've got to be kidding me, because I didn't want to get the bureaucrat angry with me so he would put more barriers in my way. But you understand what I am saying, not only did I have to follow the initial rules for additional documentation, I also had to produce even more documents just because the National Passport Office said so.
What a nightmare for any protective mother, because you had to do a song and dance for the first document and now you have to do another song and dance for the second one. My friends, that is one heck of a lot of singing and dancing for an abuser.
If you have an X who is reasonably cooperative it can be only mildly humiliating, but if you have standard abuser behavior, a situation like this is rife for trouble making.
I know some friends of mine who ended up having to go to court for a court order so they could get the necessary papers signed in order to get passports. And can you imagine, if you got the court to order the first paper signed, but the passport office came up with additional requirements as they did with me, then you would have to go back to court to get the additional requirements completed. What a nightmare!
The moral of the story is that if you are planning to have your kids go abroad for the summer and are dealing with an abusive X, make sure you take steps to get passports plenty of time, and I mean plenty of time, in advance of the scheduled trip. Otherwise, the plane may leave without them.
As an FYI, my understanding is that it is ordinarily the case that the custodial parent holds onto documents such as original birth certificates which are required when you apply for a passport. And once you obtain the passport, it is again, ordinarily the custodial parent who holds onto the passport. However, if the other parent wishes to have access to those passports for a legimate purpose, there are no legal grounds to deny that parent a copy of the passport.
Also, grandparents, if you are going out of the country with your grandchildren who are caught in a high conflict divorce, make sure you obtain permission from both parents to take the children to whatever country you are going to. Then using those parental letters of permission obtain letters from the embassy of that country indicating that you have official permission from the embassy to enter the country with your grandchildren. Otherwise, you could end up in a situation where you arrive at the airport for your vacation with the grandchildren and they won't let the kids board the plane.
Of course, again this involves all sorts of complications, opportunities for the abuser to cause problems etc. which requires that you initiate the process to obtain these documents well in advance. Forewarned is forarmed!
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