Brooklyn International Divorce Lawyer
Welcome to Spodek Law Group. We're going to tell you the truth about international divorce that nobody else will - not the sanitized version that makes it sound like filling out extra paperwork, not the reassuring fiction that courts will "work it out," but the actual reality of what happens when your marriage crosses international borders. And the reality is this: international divorce is not a legal proceeding. It's a race. A race your spouse may have already started running while you were still believing your marriage could be saved.
If your spouse has ties to another country - dual citizenship, family abroad, assets overseas - you are not in a normal divorce. You are in a jurisdiction battle where the first person to file in their preferred country often wins everything. Custody. Assets. The right to ever see your children again. By the time you realize what's happening, your spouse may already be standing in a foreign courthouse holding papers that strip you of rights you didn't know you could lose.
The Jurisdiction Race You Didnt Know You Were Running
Heres the thing nobody tells you about international divorce: it's not about who's right. It's about who files first. Every family law practitioner understands this, but the public still believes some neutral authority will "figure out" which country should handle the case. That's not how it works. The first court to accept jurisdiction often keeps it. And your spouse's lawyer knows this even if you dont.
The legal term is "forum shopping" - and while it sounds technical, what it really means is this: your spouse is picking the country where the divorce laws favor them most. Different countries have wildly different rules about alimony, asset division, and custody. Some countries give the mother automatic preference. Some countries require the father's permission for the children to leave. Some countries barely recognize women's property rights at all. Your spouse isnt being paranoid or difficult when they consult lawyers in multiple countries - there making a calculated decision about where to file.
In New York, there racing against you too. New York courts will recognize a foreign divorce decree if your spouse had even minimal physical presence in that country. One trip. One visit. That's enough for a foreign court to claim jurisdiction over your marriage, and for New York to later say "well, they handled it, so we'll respect their decision." While you thought your spouse was visiting family, they may have been establishing jurisdiction to divorce you in a legal system where you have no standing.
As Todd Spodek often explains to clients facing international divorce situations, the question isn't whether your marriage is troubled. The question is whether your spouse has already picked their battlefield while your still thinking about counseling.
How "Family Vacations" Become Child Abductions
OK so heres were it gets really uncomfortable. That trip to visit the grandparents? The one where your spouse wanted to take the kids for the summer? That may not be a vacation. It may be the setup for an international custody battle that you will loose.
In 2024, the U.S. State Department handled 739 active parental abduction cases involving 1,011 children. These aren't stranger abductions. These are cases were one parent took the children abroad and refused to bring them back. Most of these parents werent criminals or monsters. They were spouses who decided - or who's families convinced them - that the children would be "better off" in their home country. That there rights as a parent trumped your rights. That there lawyers could protect them from American courts.
Heres the pattern we see over and over. First, your spouse mentions homesickness. Missing their parents. Wanting the children to know there heritage. All of this sounds reasonable - even admirable. Then comes the suggestion of an extended visit. Just for the summer. Just to help grandmother who's getting older. The children's passports are in your spouse's name because, well, they handled that paperwork. And one day you drive them to the airport, kiss your kids goodbye, and you dont see them again for years. If ever.
Let that sink in.
The children are establishing "habitual residence" in another country. The longer they stay, the harder it becomes to argue they should return. Your spouse files for divorce in there home country. The foreign court assumes jurisdiction because the children live there now. You get papers you cant read, in a language you dont understand, with a response deadline thats already passed. By the time you hire an international lawyer, a default judgment has been entered. You've lost custody in a legal proceeding you didnt even know happened.
The Hague Convention Illusion
At this point your probably thinking: but theres international law about this, right? Treaties? Protections? You've maybe heard of the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, which sounds like exactly what you need - a mechanism to get abducted children returned to there home country.
Heres the part nobody talks about. The Hague Convention only works when both countries comply with it. In 2025, the U.S. State Department designated fifteen countries as demonstrating a "pattern of noncompliance." That list includes Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, Honduras, India, Jordan, Peru, Poland, Romania, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. If your spouse takes your children to one of these countries, the Hague Convention becomes basicly meaningless.
Look at Brazil specificaly. According to State Department data, 43 percent of return requests in Brazil remained unresolved for more than twelve months. The average unresolved case lasted two years and four months. Two years. Of not seeing your children. Of fighting a legal battle in a country you've maybe never visited, in Portugese, against a legal system that has no incentive to help you.
But even in countries that do comply with the Hague Convention, there built-in defenses that abducting parents use to keep children. The "grave risk" exception allows a parent to argue that returning the child would expose them to physical or psychological harm. The "child's objection" provision means that older children can refuse to return. The "well-settled" defense argues that if enough time has passed, the child is now acclimated to there new country. These arent loopholes - there features of the Convention that lawyers exploit constantly.
In reality, only 148 cases were resolved with the return of children to the United States in 2024. Out of 739 active cases. Thats a 20% success rate. If your spouse takes your children to a foreign country, theres an 80% chance you will not get a successful resolution within the year.
Where Your Money Disappears Before You Know Its Gone
Custody isnt the only thing that gets hidden across international borders. Assets do too. And the system is even more tilted against you when it comes to money then it is with children.
The International Academy of Family Lawyers found that 30 percent of divorcing spouses suspect there partner is hiding assets in offshore accounts. But heres the kicker - 40 percent of international family law experts report trouble enforcing foreign laws in divorce cases. Your suspsicion is probably right, and theres a good chance you cant do anything about it.
Tax havens exist because they work. Switzerland. The Cayman Islands. Belize. Singapore. These jurisdictions have built entire banking industries on the promise of confidentiality. When your spouse opened that "business account" abroad three years ago, they werent necessarily planning for divorce. But now that divorce is happening, good luck getting a Swiss bank to respond to your New York lawyer's subpoena.
Heres what actualy happens. During the marriage, your spouse moves "investments" overseas. Maybe its real estate in there home country. Maybe its a business account for there "import-export" company. Maybe its cryptocurrency in a jurisdiction with no disclosure requirements. You dont know about it because your spouse handled the finances, and besides, you trusted them.
Now divorce is filed. You're required to disclose all assets. Your spouse "forgets" about the foreign accounts. Your lawyer sends discovery requests to foreign banks. The banks dont respond - they have no obligation to. You hire forensic accountants who find traces of transfers, but cant prove where the money went. The court divides the assets it knows about. Your spouse gets half of what's visible, plus one hundred percent of what's hidden.
The more international your marriage, the more opportunities your spouse had to hide money. Thats the paradox. That glamorous life - the travel, the connections, the global lifestyle - created a thousand places for assets to dissapear.
And dont think this only applies to the ultra-wealthy. If your spouse has family who owns a business overseas, assets can be titled in relatives' names. If your spouse's parents own real estate abroad, inheritences can be hidden. If your spouse has maintained bank accounts in there home country - even small ones - those accounts can grow substantially over the years without you ever knowing. High-net-worth divorces represent about 5 percent of all divorces. But international asset complexity affects a much larger group - anyone whose spouse maintained financial connections to another country.
What Kelly Rutherfords Case Reveals About Your Rights
If you think wealth and celebrity protect you from international divorce disasters, let me tell you about Kelly Rutherford. Maybe you remember her from Gossip Girl or Melrose Place. American actress. American children. American lawyers. She lost custody of her kids to Monaco - a country smaller then Central Park.
Heres what happened. Rutherford was divorcing Daniel Giersch, a German businessman. During the divorce, Giersch's visa was revoked - reportedly at Rutherford's own request, as part of the custody battle. She thought this would help her. It destroyed her.
A California judge ruled that the children should live with Giersch in Monaco, because he couldn't come to them in California. Think about that. The father cant enter the country, so the American children go live with him in a European microstate. The judge's reasoning? Daniel had "facilitated the relationship of the children with Kelly" but "Kelly simply has not done so." She wasnt flexible enough about international visitation, so she lost custody completly.
Rutherford reportedly defied court orders at one point, refusing to send the children to Monaco. The result wasnt that she kept her kids. The result was that Daniel got full custody, and Kelly was "only permitted to exercise her visiting and accommodation rights exclusively in France and Monaco." She had to fly to Europe just to see her own children.
See the problem? An American mother, in American courts, with American lawyers, lost her American children to a foreign country because of how jurisdiction rules played out. If Kelly Rutherford - with her resources, her visibility, her ability to hire the best attorneys in the country - couldnt protect her custody rights, what makes you think the system will protect yours?
This is the uncomfortable truth that practioners know and clients dont want to hear. The system doesnt care about fairness. It cares about procedure. And procedure said those kids belonged in Monaco.
And Rutherford had resources. She had publicists who could create pressure. She had money to hire top-tier attorneys. She had media attention that made her case visible to the public. None of it mattered. The jurisdictional rules are the jurisdictional rules. Once Monaco became the relevant forum - once the children were there - California courts basicly threw up there hands.
What chance do you have if your spouse takes your children to Poland or Brazil or India? Countries where you dont speak the language. Where you have no connections. Where the legal system moves slower then molasses and has no particular interest in enforcing American court orders. Rutherford at least could afford to fly to Monaco regularly. Can you afford to spend years litigating in a country you've never even visited?
The 48-Hour Window That Determines Everything
Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas - another celebrity case that should terrify you. When they announced there divorce in 2023, Turner filed a petition under the Hague Convention claiming Jonas was "wrongfully retaining" there children in the United States by withholding there passports and preventing a return to England.
Notice what happened. Within days of the divorce announcement, this became an international custody crisis. Not months of negotiation. Days. Turner's legal team immediately recognized that whoever controlled the childrens location controlled the jurisdiction. Jonas' team was doing the same calculation in reverse.
They eventually reached a mediated agreement. But heres what that case demonstrates: at the celebrity level, with the best lawyers money can buy, both parents understood that international custody is about speed. About acting before the other side acts. About establishing facts on the ground that become legally determinative.
You probly dont have a team of international lawyers on retainer. Neither does your spouse. Which means whoever figures this out first - whoever realizes that the "normal" divorce timeline doesn't apply to international cases - has a massive advantage.
At Spodek Law Group, we've seen this play out too many times. A client comes in thinking they have months to "explore options." Meanwhile, there spouse has already consulted lawyers in there home country, started establishing residency, maybe even filed papers the client knows nothing about. The client thought they were being reasonible. Patient. Measured. They were actually loosing ground every single day.
This is critical. If you suspect your spouse is planning to take the children abroad - if theyve mentioned moving back to there home country, if theyve been making suspicious travel arrangements, if there behaivor has changed in ways that suggest they're planning something - you may have 48 hours to act. Not 48 days. Hours. You need a lawyer who understands international divorce today. Not next week.
Why Brooklyn Families Face Unique International Divorce Risks
Brooklyn is one of the most internationally connected places on earth. Walk through Brighton Beach and your in Russia. Bensonhurst is an Italian and Asian enclave. Flatbush is Caribbean. Crown Heights is hasidic Jewish with connections to Israel. Sunset Park is Chinese. Bay Ridge is Arab. This diversity is beautiful - but it also means Brooklyn families face international divorce complications that attorneys in homogeneous suburbs never encounter.
If you married someone from an immigrant family, there probably dual citizens. There parents probably own property back home. There's probably a network of relatives who consider the children to be part of that country's family, not just an American family. And if the marriage ends, those relatives will have opinions about where the children should grow up.
Spodek Law Group handles these Brooklyn international divorce cases because we understand the community dynamics. We know that in some cultures, the extended family makes decisions together - which means your spouse may have already discussed the divorce with there parents, there siblings, there cousins, and the family's opinion matters more then yours. We know that in some cultures, taking children to the home country isnt considered "abduction" - its considered "going home." The moral framework is different even when the legal framework is clear.
Over 3,600 children are currently enrolled in the State Department's Children's Passport Issuance Alert Program - a system designed to notify parents if someone tries to get a passport for there child. If you havent enrolled your children, you should. Its one of the few preventative measures that actualy works.
But prevention requires you to understand the risk before your spouse acts. Thats the whole point of everything we've been explaining. International divorce isnt about paperwork. Its about strategy. Its about understanding that your spouse - or there family - may be operating from a completely different playbook then you expect. And its about making sure you have representation that understands both playbooks.
What Happens Next
If your reading this, one of two things is true. Either your already in an international divorce situation, frantically searching for answers at 11pm because your terrified about what your spouse is planning. Or your trying to prevent that situation - you see warning signs, you have questions, and your trying to figure out how serious this really is.
Either way, the clock is running. Every day you wait is a day your spouse might be using to establish jurisdiction somewhere else. To move assets you dont know about. To make travel arrangements that will change everything.
This is not the kind of situation where you can afford to research for three more weeks before taking action.
Spodek Law Group has handled international divorce cases involving jurisdictions across the globe. We understand the Hague Convention - and we understand its limitations. We know how to prevent international child abduction before it happens. We know how to track hidden assets across borders. And we know how to fight back when another country's court is trying to strip away your rights.
The next 48 hours may determine the next 20 years. Call us at 212-300-5196. That window is closing.
