Kelly Rutherford Will Never Be Able To Bring Her Children To The US

• Tweet
• 

• Tweet
• Pin It

Monaco judge makes final ruling & grants full custody to her ex-husband Daniel Giersch, after a bitter long 6-year case.

Kelly Rutherford & her children Hermes, 9, & Helena Giersch 6.

via Daily Mail:
Kelly Rutherford has lost custody of her two children with a Monaco judge making a final decision on the lengthy legal case that has seen her locked in litigation with her ex-husband for more than six years.

In devastating court documents seen by Daily Mail Online the actress’s worst fears have been realized as the Monaco judge has granted full custody to her German ex-husband, Daniel Giersch, 41, who will continue to live with the children in Monaco.

The court order stipulates that the parents must make decisions concerning nine-year-old Hermes’s and six-year-old Helena’s ‘health, schooling, religious education and any change of residence,’ jointly. But the children will live with their father with Kelly, 47, only permitted to ‘exercise her visiting and accommodation rights exclusively in France and Monaco.’

They will spend half of Christmas, spring and summer vacations with their father and half with their mother, with their father receiving the lion’s share of contact as the children will not only live with him but spend all of All Saints and the winter with him.

The former Gossip Girl actress will receive a total of 3000 euros ($3,281) a month in maintenance.

It is the latest, and final, blow for the actress who has fought to regain custody of her children since losing them in a 2012 judgment that she described at the time as ‘shocking, illegal and abusive.’

‘It was,’ she said, ‘the most cruel act against a child I have ever witnessed in my entire life.’

Kelly and her ex-husband have been embroiled in a vicious battle since before their divorce was finalized in 2009 when she was pregnant with Helena. The couple had married just three years earlier shortly before the birth of their son, Hermes.

The process has been so taxing on her finances that she was forced to file for bankruptcy in May 2013 after years of litigation fees reportedly totaling around $1.4million.

Speaking to Vanity Fair in October Kelly stated: ‘Divorce is a total racket – let’s call it what it is. Everyone’s making tons of money off of stupid people who don’t settle out of court…And for somebody like my ex-husband, [who has] unlimited funds, who sued Google, this is just a sort of side fun project.’

For Kelly it has been anything but a ‘side fun project.’ In August she was ordered by court to return her children to her husband in Monaco after refusing to do so following their two-month summer vacation visit – an act that her ex-husband described as tantamount to ‘kidnap.’

Kelly filed a lawsuit demanding the court overturn the judge’s decision to return her children to Monaco that very same day.

She claimed that the original judge would not allow her or her lawyers to leave the courtroom until they had handed over her children and children’s passports – a bone of contention between her and her ex-husband. Giersch has now been granted the right to obtain German passports for his children, something to which Kelly has long objected.

Kelly branded her husband’s claims that he did not know where his children were a lie and also said that his emergency petition for the return of the children was unwarranted leaving her little or no time to respond to the petition.

She ordered that the judge’s decision be vacated and the children remain with her.

Her case was swiftly dismissed with the judge saying that the federal court did not have jurisdiction in this matter.

Now Kelly’s behavior has been heavily criticized with the Monaco court finding that ‘the mother has consistently retained the children’s passports that made it difficult for him [the father] since he could not come and go in their company, [Giersch has ongoing visa issues] nor similarly prove their identity, and she also objected to the issuing of German passports.’

Giersch described the limitations imposed by Kelly as ‘unacceptable.’

‘Furthermore,’ it was claimed, ‘the mother’s conduct also affected the children’s health since they had not been vaccinated.’

Their father intends to vaccinate them in accordance with French law.

In the ugly to and fro of the legal battle Kelly’s attorney’s described Giersch as, ‘paranoid, hostile, narcissistic, rigid and cold.’

But the court ‘considered that the children, who had lived in Monaco with their father for three and a half years, were perfectly content and that it was in their interests to remain in the Principality,’ with Giersch’s attorney’s maintaining that Kelly had ‘little interest in her children’s schooling.’

They claimed that recently, ‘she wanted Helena to spend the day with her, although the children was starting a new school year.’

The court threw out Giersch’s demand that all money received by Kelly for ‘exposure of her children in the media’ should be paid into a bank account opened in his name, for the children.

But for Kelly this small victory must be cold comfort.

Kelly has filed an appeal and declined to comment on the court decision.