Sloan

In this case we consider the significance of a “trial period” of residence on a child’s “habitual residence” under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Elaine Murphy seeks the return of her child, E.S., to Ireland. We affirm the judgment of the district court that E.S. was a habitual resident of the United States, where she presently resides with her father, William Sloan.

Background

Sloan, a citizen of the United States, and Murphy, a citizen of Ireland, were married in California in 2000. They lived together in Mill Valley, in California, and had a daughter, E.S., in 2005. In October 2009, Sloan told Murphy that he felt their marriage was at an end, and moved to a different bedroom in their house.

In January 2010, Murphy and Sloan enrolled E.S. in a private California preschool for the next fall. But these plans changed in the spring of 2010, after Murphy proposed moving to Ireland so that she could get a master’s degree in fine arts from University College Cork and so that E.S. “could experience going to school” there. Murphy and Sloan discussed the move to Ireland as a “trial period,” and Sloan wrote to both the private…