The Legal Loophole
Florida’s exemption under the current law blocks parent v. parent claims for custodial interference in the civil courts. Since criminal penalties are rarely enforced, this creates an environment where parental child abduction is effectively encouraged.
Impact
Changing the law in Florida to eliminate the exemption would create a significant deterrent for reducing breaches of custody orders and would provide a methodology to obtain justice when the changed law is ignored. Robert wants to help other children and their custodial parents by making it much less likely that what happened to his daughter and him will happen to them.
The Solution?
CHANGE THE LAW
AT THE FLORIDA LEGISLATURE
or at the
FLORIDA SUPREME COURT
REMOVE THIS EXEMPTION
Legal Overview
• Robert filed a Complaint against his ex-wife, Tika Van Den Hurk, and her husband, Richard Peacey, in the Broward County Circuit Court on July 24, 2018.
• The Complaint details Tika’s and Richard’s interference with the custody of Robert’s and Tika’s then-teenage daughter, Olivia Glegg, after Tika and Richard failed to return Olivia to Canada where she legally resided with Robert. On September 3, 2014, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that Tika unlawfully detained Olivia in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• Olivia, desperately unhappy but afraid to confront her mother, Tika, felt safe to confide her anguish and despair regarding her confinement in Florida to a close friend back home in Canada. Most notably, Olivia expressed her true desire to return to her content and happy home in Canada with her father, Robert, in two text messages to that friend dated September 3, 2014, stating:
“I miss everyone especially u so much,” and “I cry all the time.”
• Robert and Olivia flew back to their home in Ontario on October 2, 2014.
• Beginning in 2014, through 2016, Tika repeatedly interfered with Robert’s parental rights and relationship with Olivia. As a result, Robert’s loving relationship with Olivia became nonexistent. The anguish and suffering that both Olivia and Robert have endured is unfathomable. Tika, because she is the other parent, is immune from civil prosecution by Robert, as the law now stands in Florida.
• On June 24, 2024, the Florida Supreme Court denied Robert’s Petitioner’s Brief on Jurisdiction wherein Robert was asking the Florida Supreme Court to hear his Appeal to change the law and eliminate the exemption.
• Robert will be seeking to convince the Florida Legislature to pass a bill that would change the law.
• As an alternative, Robert plans to demonstrate that both Tika and her lawyer, Edward McGee, knowingly made numerous materially and demonstrably false representations to the Broward County Circuit Court, the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal, and the Florida Supreme Court; and, therefore prevailed by fraud. Incredibly, their misconduct included lying to the Florida Supreme Court that Olivia never wrote the text messages saying: “I miss everyone especially u so much” and “I cry all the time”, when they knew that the text messages were authentic, misleading Florida’s highest Court to think that Olivia did not want to live with Robert. Robert will ask the Florida Supreme Court to set aside its decision of June 24, 2024, and reconsider changing the law.
Robert does not want another child to cry all the time
Either at the Florida Legislature or at the Florida Supreme Court, Robert is determined to change this law so that a Florida parent will think long and hard about the civil consequences of interfering with the other parent’s custody of their child before doing so. Robert does not want another child to cry all the time.
Get Involved
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Your support can help us create a legal system that truly protects children and their custodial parents. There are two ways you can get involved and make a difference.