Supreme Court freezes Appeals Court ruling over custody dispute UPDATED 21.00

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In the latest twist in the ongoing story of custody of two children of a Finnish mother and American father, the Finnish Supreme Court ruled late on Friday afternoon to stall the carrying out of a decision made earlier in the same day by the Appeals Court of Eastern Finland that the two boys - Jacob and Alexander Rogers - be allowed to stay with their mother in Finland, rather than being returned with their father to South Carolina.
      The boys' father John Rogers had immediately appealed against the earlier judgement. The matter will be given further consideration by the Supreme Court in due course. No further details were given at the time of the Supreme Court announcement, save for the temporary annulment of the Appeals Court ruling.
     
In the course of the day, a number of legal experts had expressed grave doubts about the Appeals Court decision, arguing for instance that it was not possible to order the children to be returned to their mother, Outi Koski, as she is not their legal guardian.
      Sole custody of the brothers, aged 10 and 13, was awarded to the father by a U.S. court after the mother failed to return the boys following a 2003 holiday in Finland.
      Prof. Urpo Kangas of the University of Helsinki Law Faculty is among those who regard the Appeals Court ruling as unsafe. He argues that the court took a stand on an issue that it was not asked to resolve.
      The boys' mother had appealed to the court over the implementation by bailiffs of a September Supreme Court return order, which was in fact the upholding of a still earlier August decision in favour of the father. The Supreme Court then acknowledged its obligations under the terms of the Hague Convention, which specifies that the children should be returned to the country of their official residence. 
      At some point, said Kangas, this latest case in the Appeals Court of Eastern Finland had suddenly morphed into a kind of hearing over actual custody, and the decision handed down concerned custody of the children.
     
Kangas says the judicial error happened already at the point when the complaint against the bailiff's carrying out of the earlier order was accepted by the court.
      The task of the Supreme Court is now  to assess the legality of the entire process.
      If the Supreme Court finds that there were no grounds for the Appeals Court to hear the complaint in the first place, the judgements by the lower courts will be overturned and removed.
      This would, apparently, leave matters where they were some two months or more ago - in other words the Supreme Court would uphold the right of the boys' father to have them returned to the United States.
     
Nevertheless, it is unlikely we have heard the last of this matter, and it is to be anticipated that the story will continue to be displayed prominently in the tabloid pages for some time to come.
      Further details of earlier developments (both today and in previous weeks) can be found from the attached piece filed this morning and from the IntEd links at the bottom of that article.  

More on this subject:
 Custody dispute brothers ordered to remain with mother

Helsingin Sanomat