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By Rich Calder
August 13, 2014 |
8:14pm
“Gossip Girl” star Kelly Rutherford says she
feels betrayed by Uncle Sam.
“My own country won’t
protect the rights of my own children,” said the beautiful blond actress,
fuming, after storming out of a Manhattan federal courtroom briefly Wednesday
to compose herself as
she suffered a big setback in her bid to keep her son Hermés, 7, and daughter
Helena, 5, in the US.
Manhattan federal Judge
Andrew Carter Jr. said he wouldn’t interfere with a California state judge’s
2012 order requiring the kids to live with their father, Rutherford’s
ex-husband Daniel Giersch, in France. Although Carter won’t officially issue
his written opinion until Friday, he said he doesn’t believe he has jurisdiction
to issue any type of order prohibiting the children from returning to
France once their summer vacation ends next week.
The couple has 50-50
custody, but as
Page Six reported Wednesday, Rutherford, 45, of Manhattan, claims her kids are basically
being “deported” through an odd legal fluke.
Giersch, a German
citizen living in France, was expelled from the US for alleged visa fraud and
failure to pay taxes.
Since he can’t visit
the children in the US, a California state judge ordered that the children
should remain with him during the school year. A cash-strapped Rutherford
over the past two years has flown more than 40 times to France to see her
children.
In another legal
rarity, Rutherford’s legal team – which is working for free because the
actress has already gone bankrupt shelling out $1.5 million in legal fees –
recommended the government take steps to allow Giersch back into the US so
that he’d no longer be able to dance around the legal loopholes allowing him
to keep the American-born children in France.
Carter agreed to
“facilitate” the plan, at one point allowing Giersch’s and Rutherford’s
lawyers to meet in his robing room to discuss the idea. However, it was
unclear afterwards if Giersch wants to pursue getting his US visa back.
“He has benefited by
doing nothing,” said Michael J. Wildes, a lawyer for Rutherford. “This case
underscores the blind spots in our law. We have a broken immigration system.”
A composed Rutherford
said afterwards that she was thankful the judge and feds agreed to help
broker an agreement with her ex. However, a half hour earlier she was
noticeably upset after briefly leaving the courtroom.
She said her children as
US citizens have a right to be educated in America and that “something like
this would never happen” in any other country– especially “Germany.”
She also said the legal
system is unfair because her children – “who are US citizens” — are being
“forced” to leave America while she’s stuck paying taxes to help support the
children of parents “who illegally crossed our borders.”
Rutherford filed suit
on August 5 against US Attorney General Eric Holder and other federal
officials, seeking a court order declaring the California ruling
“unconstitutional” so that her children could remain in the country.
“No similar case could
be found where children who were born and raised in the United States were
deported from their own country, where their mother still resides, to
accommodate the demands of a non-citizen parent forbidden to re-enter the
United States,” the suit says.
Carter, however, said
the children aren’t being “deported” in the official sense and that he
believes their constitutional rights are not being violated. He said the
“state court made a determination that the children should be with the
father” and that he’s “convinced” he doesn’t have jurisdiction to overturn
such a ruling.
Rutherford’s lawyers said they’d consider
taking the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals once Carter’s
dismissal is official. However, time is running out because the children are
required to return to France on August…
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This poor woman has just lost her final court appeal...
Well this was heartbreaking, but a good
lesson to other mothers.
“STAY OUT OF COURTS WITH THESE
ONGOING CUSTODY FIGHTS.
THE COURTS ARE
NOT YOUR FRIEND”
Sadly, our courts have been
overrun with mens rights nuts and crazy gender neutralized feminists who are
always looking to demonstrate that men and women are completely the same by
removing children from their mother’s custody.
Of course, right on schedule, the
children were immediately dumped off on Giersch’s mother who has a permanent
residence in Monaco. I wonder if they’ll
even speak English by the time they come back to the US which will probably
happen when they are adults…
BTW, after six months or so of
residence in another country, state, whatever, Giersch can re-file his court
papers in the children’s new place of residence and get himself legally
declared sole custodian and then this poor woman won’t even have the fiction of
“50/50 custody” to comfort her.
Although Ms. Rutherford appears
to believe this is the only time this situation has happened, I have heard of a
number of mothers having their children legally relocated to other countries with
court approval. So in some sense the children
are lucky, especially her daughter. She
could be living in the mid-east right now, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, anywhere. Fortunately they are living in a stable European
country, their grandmother is caring for them and I assume they will be in a
proper school at some point.
Someone commented in another
article about this decision that it was “the worse custody ruling ever”…but I
must disagree. The worse custody ruling
ever was when a California female Judge returned two children to OJ Simpson
even though they had been living with loving grandparents for almost a year during his murder trial. There was no reason to overturn the stable
environment they were already living in, OJ could have visited them on schedule
like non-custodial parents everywhere do, he could have retained parental rights w/o upsetting the stability of the childrens' lives. How many mothers do I know who lost custody with that exact rationale, many.
If I live to be 100, I will never get over that custody ruling...
“Best interest of the children” it’s laughable really when you look at many
of the rulings coming from these courts…
I was actually waiting for this
to happen to Halle Berry when she started this whole court fight to move to France with her daughter.
Halle was very, very lucky that
time, I hope she doesn’t repeat this error of judgment by attempting to go back
to court on other issues in the future.
It could end badly for her.
Anyway I reiterate: stay away from courts mothers please.
