Reply to MIL wants to take kids out of the country without us

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I spent a week with my (childless) aunt in her home country the summer I was 10.  It was a wonderful experience (and this was before the days of cell phones so I didn't speak to my parents for the entire week), and I would gladly send my kids to stay alone with my parents or sisters if they were invited.  But my family is very close (we visit regularly and my parents provide some childcare during visits, etc.) and also realistic about what we handle.  If the country in question is of equal safety/security to the country you live in, [b]I guess I'm not seeing why this is so different then visiting grandma in CA from MD?[/b][/quote]

It depends on the country and the support.  Traveling internationally is a lot more complicated than traveling domestically.  Dealing with passports, customs and international laws is significantly more complicated.  In addition. there are other countries that have kidnapping laws in place, so you want to make sure that if your children are traveling as unaccompanied minors or traveling with a non-guardian relative (like the grandmother), that you have the appropriate notarized documentation that includes both parents signature that she has authorization to take these children across international borders.  Traveling internationally, when you have separate sovereign nation laws, rules, regulations and documentation, can be more difficult, especially if you are not the parent or legal guardian of the child traveling.  Many Americans are not good at checking all of the appropriate laws and regulations when traveling internationally, especially if they are traveling to multiple counties and can get into all sorts of legal issues.

For example, I know of a family who was doing something similar (an aunt was taking her nieces to visit a grandparent in Europe).  They traveled to one country where they had a layover and then traveled to the destination country.  They did not check and they had documentation issues in the layover country and the delay in customs there caused them to miss their transfer flight.  All because they didn't have a notarized document signed by both parents that the aunt was authorized to take the kids internationally.  And she was not the legal guardian.  She had their passports, but not documentation that the parents had approved the travel, so this took hours to resolve.  Different nations have different laws and you have to adhere to all of them.  When you are the parent, you have certain legal rights.  But extended family, like the aunt I knew and OP's MIL (grandmother) are not guaranteed parental rights in international scenarios and that can complicate things.

When you travel from MD to CA, you are traveling entirely within the borders of one nation (the US) and you are not subject to varying international law.  There is less complication when traveling intranationally vs internationally.[/quote]

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