In Japan, foreign parents lead charge against loss of child custody
A growing number of foreign nationals in Japan are speaking out against what they say is a little-known but entrenched system that allows one parent in a broken relationship to take away children and block the other from visiting them. The issue of what domestic ...
Australian father gets suspended term for trespassing at in-law's Tokyo home
A Tokyo-based Australian journalist and father was given a suspended prison term of six months by the Tokyo District Court on Wednesday for illegally trespassing into a building complex where his in-laws live in Tokyo's Suginami Ward in October, in what the journalist said ...
Opposition parties submit bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Japan
Major opposition parties have submitted a bill that would permit same-sex marriage, a move that comes weeks after Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalize gay marriage. The bill, submitted Monday, is unlikely to go far in the Diet, where the ruling Liberal ...
Japan's Supreme Court rejects man's damages claim against ex-wife's partner over adultery
The Supreme Court Tuesday rejected a damages claim brought by a man in his 40s against his former spouse's then-lover, infidelity with whom led, he claimed, to he and his wife's divorce. At the top court's Third Petty Bench, presiding Judge Yuko Miyazaki said that ...
Left-behind dad's last resort: Impeach Japan's Supreme Court judges
Dogged father in Hague Convention case shines a light on a check-and-balance on the judiciary that barely functions.
Japan's Supreme Court orders a child be sent home in a Hague parental abduction case. Maybe.
Defanged habeas corpus grew some teeth in last month's Nagoya international custody ruling, but the problem of toothless enforcement remains.
Can I sue in Japan to get back the money I spent on my former fiancee?
Does a reader who spent $20,000 on his fiancee have legal grounds to sue her now she has called the whole thing off? Well, that depends.
Yuko Miyazaki, newly appointed to the country's top court, says she will issue her legal judgments under her maiden name — Miyazaki — becoming Japan's first woman to abandon the court's long tradition of using one's legal name after marriage. Miyazaki, 66, who has more ...
Cybozu chief Yoshihisa Aono leads suit against Japanese government for right to use premarital names
The plaintiffs claim that the use of different rules for foreign nationals contravenes constitutional rights guaranteeing equality under the law.
Japan's Supreme Court hands down a road map for parental child abductions
The top court's latest ruling suggests judges will find ways to avoid messy Hague Convention returns that Japan lacks the means to enforce anyway.
Mom prevails as top court upholds ruling in high-profile custody rights case
The Supreme Court has upheld a decision that granted a mother custody of her 9-year-old daughter, finalizing a high-profile dispute over custody rights. After the couple separated in May 2010, their relationship worsened. The woman then absconded with the daughter without her husband's consent, the ...
Dividing assets: a thorny issue in divorce cases, whether international or domestic
A reader wrote to Lifelines recently about the subject of dividing property upon divorce.
