NEWS STORY: Taiwanese/US Custody Battle

Discussion Open Forum
1

My wife has been extremely upset this weekend over a TV news story concerning a Taiwanese lady and US man fighting over custody of their daughter. According to my wife it looks like the lady, who’s doing a lot of crying for the news reporters, will probably lose custody of the girl.

Does anyone know anything about this story?

(I think it’s totally stupid, but my wife apparently fears now that (a) I’ll steal our girl and flee to America and/or (b) everyone who sees us now feels I’m a bad man and she’s a fool as a result of this story. :unamused: )

2

From what I can gather, the mother was in the US when she gave birth. The father was married to someone else at the time, and the mom returned to Taiwan. The dad recently showed up with some sort of court order from the US :astonished: and is trying to leave the country with the daughter. I’d really like to know more about this as well, as what I understand of it is incomplete and confusing…anyone else out there know what’s up?

3

My fiancee and I have been talking about this as well. From what I gather it goes a bit deeper…aparently she was the surrogate mather for the child…this is based on info my fiancee gave from a news report she saw on TV

4

Ooh! This is all different from what my SO told me!

Woman in the US, hooks up with man, but she is dumped when she is 5 months pregnant. She comes back to Taiwan, kid is now 2.5 years old, and in that time the man has had nothing to do with the kid. Man goes through legal processes in the US to get kid back, even got a psych report of some or other nature.

The thot plickens!

5

My fiancee and I have been talking about this as well. From what I gather it goes a bit deeper…aparently she was the surrogate mather for the child…this is based on info my fiancee gave from a news report she saw on TV[/quote]
Hmm…basically same as what I’m hearing from the wife - except she was not aware that she was intended to be the surrogate mom for US Guy & his Taiwanese wife.
Also, baby was born in USA, so baby had to have a USA passport to leave USA (born there, citizen there - which I personally think is a crock). So wife had to use USA passport to take baby out of USA to Taiwan - now she refuses to come up with babys’ USA passport so child can go to USA.

Whatever the story is…I have pity for the child and none for any of the adults. Maybe a small bit for the mother.

6

Ahhhh, it’s getting clearer… but where’s this guy’s Taiwanese wife, then? Seems strange that she would send hubby to Taiwan to fetch the child but not come with…

7

I still don’t get it. You guys are saying this Taiwanese woman screwed a man in the US, knowing he was married to someone else and intending to be a “surrogate mother”. What does that mean? She intended to get pregnant by him then give up the child to him and his wife? Bad idea.

The one thing that makes sense to me is that the US guy showed up in Taiwan with a court order. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he initiated a legal proceeding there and the Taiwanese mom ignored the order to appear that she received in teh mail. In Taiwan people know nothing abt court proceedings and ignore court appointments all the time. You can’t do that in the US. If you miss your hearing date you may be screwed. Also screwed if you don’t hire a good, competent lawyer, which might be difficult if you’re a Taiwan citizen who knows nothing about the US legal system.

8

I don’t have a Taiwanese SO to help me understand what’s going on, but this is what I can figure out.

According to this article, the two met when she was in New York working as reporter and she interviewed him (yeah journalistic ethics!) When he learned that she was pregnant, he immediately got a divorce with his wife and tried to get together with her. They began fighting over who would have custody (no details on what either side wanted). He got a court order to bar them from leaving the country, but the mother left with the kid anyway. The mother couldn’t go back to the States because she was wanted for kidnapping. After a bunch of legal wrangling, he finally found the kid and got a Taiwanese court to allow him to take his kid back home.

Thankfully, there’s a legislator there to help us understand the complexities of the case. “Us Taiwanese get bullied when we go abroad. Now this American can just stroll right in and take away the child. If the government can’t even protect us on this fundamental level, what good are they?”

My gut instinct is to sympathize with the man, well at least as much as I can have sympathy for a cheating philanderer. The woman kidnapped their kid and tried to hide her from her father. When the mother lost the legal battle, she went crying to the tabloid reporters.

If anything, the people who should be worried about having their kids taken away from them are you foreign guys. :smiling_imp:

9

Thanks for clearing this up, Alidarbac.

Turns out to be tawdry all the way around, with the kid being the loser.

10

Thanks alidarbac. Any idea why she was interviewing this guy? Who/what is he that warrants being interviewed in the US by a Taiwanese reporter?

11

That first article doesn’t say much. They only mention that she was in the US working on a master’s degree in New York and working for some TV news outfit while he was a manager at some sort of investment firm.

This is my guess as to what happened: They got together once he learned she was pregnant and then divorced his American wife. He makes an honest attempt to get things right with her, but they soon hit a roadblock when he insists that they stay in the States, while she wants to go back to Taiwan. He hires a lawyer, gets a court order saying that the kid can’t leave the States. She ignores the order and manages to slip away with the kid back to Taiwan. She thinks she’s in the clear once she is back in Taiwan and ignores all of his letters and phone calls. He spends two years patiently working through the legal system to get the Taiwanese courts to recognize the US court’s decision. When the Taiwanese court finally agrees with the American decision and allows him to take his daughter back to the US, she realizes, uh oh, maybe I need a lawyer. So she calls up a couple of publicity whore lawyers and legislators and all the TV reporters she can find. When the cameras get there, she turns on the tear ducts and tells a bunch of lies about how she was abandoned, etc. The father, on the advice of his American lawyers, doesn’t comment, and as such the tabloids report her version of the story as the truth.

I especially love this quote from this earlier article: “I’m only a simple mother. I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about my daughter being alone with all those strangers (i.e. her father). He is going to need a translator to communicate with his daughter.”

12

Thanks alidarbac, that’s a very logical and plausible explanation. Under US law, barring some very unusual reason, both parents should be entitled to joint custody or at least visitation plus communication, etc. Even if she flew back to Taiwan a US court would likely require her to at least send the kid back (or accompany her back) to the US from time to time for visits to the dad. If she violated such orders, and an order not to take the kid from teh country as you opined, she would definitely get in bad graces with the court, and rightfully so.

This situation is tough every time. Taiwanese often have an inability to adapt and settle in the US and feel such a huge need to return to Taiwan, especially when a relationship fails, so I empathize with the woman. But on the other hand, it’s his daughter too and he also has rights to see/be with her. In a way it doesn’t seem fair that these situations usually involve a man in the US with more money and power and he can force the baby to be in the US for visitation/custody, when she wants/needs to be in Taiwan but is often too poor/uneducated/powerless to fight the situation, so she fails to promptly obtain competent counsel and fight as she must.

I’ve found that even succesful adult business men from Taiwan have no comprehension of how serious the US legal system is – the deadlines, the requirements, the need to hire counsel, the great cost of hiring counsel – and they often assume they can disregard it. With a non-professional person, a wife who’s overwhelmed with emotions over her child and her separation, it’s even easier to see how they stupidly ignore the serious legal threat. Oh well. . .

But regardless of all that, unless she really screwed up (or got screwed over) badly, it seems she should still have partial custody, no? Or at least substantial visitation rights. Perhaps that part hasn’t been fully reported locally.

13

aldibarac’s last post squares with what i read in the paper. the chinese paper reported she ran off without his knowledge and cut off contact with him. at least the taiwan court did what was right here.

mt i’d make it clear to your wife and everyone that based on the facts of the story you should be the one in fear :wink: :bravo: (as a matter of fact i’ve had to once or twice already :laughing: )

14

Do the police decide the law or the courts?

15

As a on topic but also off topic question on this, whats happens if a non US citizen/resident receives a court notification but is unable to attend and unable to appoint consel due to cost issues, what recourse to anything would such a person have, and if nothing, then surely any subsequent ruling is not necessarily fair or just.

Not saying that this is the case, just a question.

16

China Post today, she claims she has proof of him showing the girl porn!

chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/deta … 1825&GRP=B

This all kind of seems familiar… what was that story from a few years back with the Brazilian boy? I remember the chaos ensuing there. Something about both parents being deceased, and custody going to a Brazilian relative, but the family in Taiwan got hold of the boy and refused to let him leave. That was a three-ring media circus extravaganza in ever there has been one.

17

The woman was in the United States when she received notification, so I presume she could afford the cost of a bus ticket to at least show up.

[quote=“Eric W. Lier”]Do the police decide the law or the courts?

[sarcasm]Oh, ok. That’s a good reason for custody. Sorry for the inconvenience ma’am. Hope your life expectancy goes up now…
:loco: [/sarcasm]

18

Then article posted here was a fairly accurate account of what has appeared in the media over the weekend.

The China Times has been consistently reporting the opinion of Taiwanese lawyers that Ms. Ruan made a very serious mistake when she ignored the US court order and that while she can probably delay the departure of her daughter, she will almost certainly not be able to prevent it. An editorial piece today (by a lawyer, I think) said that appealing to public opinion through the media was useless as this was a purely legal issue at this point.

Forumosans will remember that despite many questions in the foreign community about the fairness of the Taiwanese courts, they eventually returned Iruan Wu to his grandmother

MT’s comments about how Taiwanese misapprehend the nature of the law in the US are well worth reading again.

As far as I can tell though, the father seems to have had the money to get good lawyers and put the law to work for him. Despite Ms. Ruan’s stupidity, I think a fundamental injustice is being done here that will end in the child never seeing her mother again. No wonder the public is outraged. And shame on the media again for making money out of other people’s suffering.

19

Other things I don’t understand:

She interviewed this guy - why? He’s a famous investor dude, worthy of interviews from the international press. Ok, fine. Did she not google his name? Where’s the due diligence? How can you go into a media interview without knowing the most basic facts about the subject of your interview? It’s not like it’s hidden information. And the HUGE coincidence that he was also married to a Taiwanese woman - that never came up in the interview? Colour me sceptical.

Also, why is she covering her face with the hat and dark glasses? It’s not like she’s the victim of some shameful crime - unless poor reporting has suddenly become shameful. (We can only hope!) She has also not said why she didn’t appear in the American courts when she was there, or why she didn’t appear in the Taichung courts? What - she was busy?

The whole story is being presented in the media without the benefit of the man’s side of the story. Interestingly, the woman’s own friends and former co-workers have portrayed her as something as a gold-digger, telling them that she would not even consider dating a man who didn’t own a house and a car.

20

It’s a complicated story, but the plane might have taken off by now.

She claims they were lovers, he 52, she 37, she got pregnant. Then she claims he disappared from her life until the day after baby was born, when he informed her he wanted custody. He even offered her $50,000 for the baby and go away, she said. He said she said, that is. She then claims she didn’t know he was already married, he had neglected to tell her he was already married to a Taiwanese woman. Perfect lie.

[btw, Ruan worked for the KMT Central Daily News newspaper in New York office. That is how she interviewed him. Gold digger? maybe. but she didn’t take the 50,000 he offered for baby. Let’s not judge until all facts are in. Seems a very complicated case.]

Papers also say he and his TW wife in USA could not conceive a baby, one of them was infertile, so they maybe wanted this baby as their own. The bloke looks like a nice guy, from photo on TV, and the mother looks like a nice woman, though sad, from her photo, but what about this wife in USA?

What does SHE know that we don’t know here?

This entire thing smells rotten. All 3 English newspapers have had stories about this the last few days, so you can read about it there online. It’s the story of a Solomon-like decicison, which half of the baby stays in taiwan and which half goes back to usa?

Looks like the man and $$$ and legal advice wins out. Wonder what Richard H. would say about this decision.

(the man in the story, Kelly, Cary, Carrie, Carrey, Mr Carry, he has many names in the media now, even looks a bit like Richard’s twin brother, minus the moustache…)

Emily! take care!