Differences between the Japanese and American Divorce Procedure

Child custody is given to the mother in almost all cases of divorce in Japan. According to the 2017 statistics presented by the Ministry of Justice of Japan, custody was given to the mother in around 90% of the recorded 20,588 cases of divorce through trial or settlement.

The typical image is that the mother lives with the child after divorce and makes all important decisions regarding the child on her own. 

A father without custody is unable to interfere with any decisions over the child’s life or education. He will be allowed to spend time with the child a few times per month if he is able to receive permission from the court or the mother. These regular meetings between the child and the father are permitted by what is called “visitation rights.”

Now that we have seen how custody is managed in Japan, it’s time to look at the situation in the United States.

In the U.S, a core assumption is that “the child should be raised and feel loved by both parents even if they are divorced”. Therefore, important decisions regarding the child must be made with both parents present, even after their divorce. 

One may describe the post-divorce dynamic as “an ex-couple taking on equal shares of work to raise their child”. For example, some families may have the child spend the weekdays at one parent’s house and stay at the other parents on weekends. Other families may alternate the weekdays in which the child will stay at their house; the child spends one set of weekdays at her mother’s, and then spend the weekdays of next week at her father’s.

In the case of longer vacations such as summer or spring breaks, time spent with the child is split equally between each parent. For holidays, the child may stay at her father’s – for example, on Thanksgiving – and at her mother’s during Christmas, and then vice versa for next year. Careful arrangements are made so that the time spent with the child is as equal as possible between the two parents.

Such is the way done in the U.S, where both the father and mother raise the child jointly even after divorce. This right for both parents to raise their own child is called “Joint Custody”.

(3) Is it allowed to take the child to your parent’s house?

When watching Japanese films or dramas, you may encounter scenes in which a mother cries, “I’m going back to my parents’ house!” and takes their child with her after an intense quarrel with her husband. Cases in which a mother takes their child away to her parents’ house leaving just a message for the husband to read on the table are not uncommon. Since mothers will gain custody after divorce anyway in Japan for most cases, this practice rarely poses any serious issues. 

However, this is not the case in the U.S. It is considered a federal offense to remove a child from his/her home without the permission from the other spouse, and is classified as “parental kidnapping”, even if the child is legitimately your own. 

If it is found that you have taken your child away from home without the other parents’ consent, you may become subject to criminal charges for child kidnapping, even if you had just brought them temporarily to your parents’ or mutual friend’s home. “Not knowing the law” is not an accepted excuse to the police if they come for you. The simple fact that you had “taken the child away without permission” will likely result in a huge disadvantage to you during the divorce process, and it will also not look good to the judge in charge of your hearing.

Those who are raised in Japan who do not know the American stance on the issue may think to themselves, “I’ll move back to Japan with the child since we’ll end up divorcing anyway”, and those who are suffering from their state of marriage may want to “get away and go back to Japan as soon as possible before finalizing our divorce.”