A publication by the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (LI LCSS) has appeared in the 2025 edition of the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Agnė Limantė, a researcher at the LCSS Law Institute, together with Dr. Anna Wysocka-Bar from the Centre for Private International Law at the Faculty of Law of Jagiellonian University, co-authored the article titled “Cross-Border Child Abduction from the UK: Comparative Analysis of Polish and Lithuanian Court Cases”.

In this publication, Dr. Limantė and Dr. Wysocka-Bar examine court cases from Lithuania and Poland that deal with instances of parental child abduction—specifically, situations where one parent, a citizen of either Lithuania or Poland who had been residing in the United Kingdom, returns to their home country with the child(ren) without the other parent’s consent, thereby potentially abducting the child(ren).

The article presents a thorough comparative analysis of judicial practices over a five-year period (2019–2023), focusing on cases directly related to the application and interpretation of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The study identifies the legal procedures courts must follow in determining whether a parental abduction has occurred and in deciding whether the child(ren) should be returned to the United Kingdom, in accordance with the 1980 Hague Convention, the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and other relevant legal instruments. The authors also present statistical data on such legal violations and conclude with an analysis of key differences between Lithuanian and Polish judicial approaches to cases involving potential parental child abduction.

Publication by A. Limantė and A. Wysocka-Bar.