Question: Regarding changing venues. My divorce was finalized in Oregon in 2002. I was awarded sole custody and moved to South Carolina and remarried. My children are now 15 (boy) and 13 (girl) years old and only see their father 49 days each summer, which is his choice. 

The children feel that they are getting of age where they should have a say as to whether they should have to go to Oregon (different county than the divorce) every summer. I want the kids to remain having a good relationship with their father; however, as they grow older, they are pulling away and feel forced by the Oregon courts to keep this schedule until they are 18 years old. 

What is the benefit of our changing venue to South Carolina? Would the court system allow teenagers more say?

Question: My sister is divorced with two children from that marriage. I want to take her children on a vacation out of state.

Their father says he wants them to go with me, but he’s being very difficult in terms of trying to establish dates to even take the trip.

As their aunt, do I have any rights or am I at his mercy?

DadsDivorce.com editor, Rick Ortiz, talks to the attorney for Christopher Savoie, a divorced dad recently imprisoned in Japan for trying to return his kidnapped children to America.

Savoie's attorney, Paul J. Bruno of the Nashville law firm Bell, Tennent & Frogge, PLLC, speaks to DadsDivorce.com about the circumstances that led to the foreign  imprisonment of this devoted divorced father and what lies ahead in his effort to be reunited with his two young children.

Learn more about how international kidnapping of children of divorce is exacerbated when the kidnapping parent retreats to countries such as Japan, who have not signed on to the Hague Convention.