District court’s findings that parents did not have a “mutually settled intention” to abandon U.S. residence when they returned to their former home country, and thus their children did not cease to be U.S. residents for purposes of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, were not clearly erroneous where mother credibly testified that family retained its business interests in the United States and expected to return here because of them and that wife’s return trip to this country was related to those interests; husband’s contrary testimony was not credible; and independent witnesses confirmed wife’s testimony. Father’s contention that he and mother had unequivocally changed the habitual residence of their children from the United States to Greece was not supported by objective fact where children attended English-speaking schools because they did not speak or write Greek and did not have “anything resembling a permanent home during their four months in Greece” and did not adapt to life in Greece, and where mother took one trip back to the United States and tried to leave with the children again after less than two months.
     Papakosmas v. Papakosmas – filed April 16, 2007
     Cite as No. 0555211

A colleague recently noted that “A contract can only be enforced by obtaining orders based thereon. A marital settlement agreement is a contract. It uses language of agreement rather than order. It contains non-executory provisions that cannot be included in a judgment.”

Their preference is to “…avoid MSA’s, and prepare a stipulated judgment. It includes findings of the parties’ various representations and warrantees. It is written in terms of an order, not an agreement. I see no benefit for most families to pay a lawyer to draft two documents, and spend several hours editing the language into the language of judgment.”

I would suggest that careful lawyers might consider utilizing both in complex cases because they are different.

The Stipulated Judgment does not cover all the areas covered in a well wrought Marital Settlement Agreement.