Emerging issues in international family law – part 2 Possibilities and challenges to providing effective legal remedies in cases of transnational marriage abandonment

This is the second article in a tripartite series of papers about transnational marriage abandonment of women. The first article in this series outlines three forms of transnational abandonment of women. In this article we focus on the second category of abandonment where a wife is abandoned abroad by her husband who returns to England with her travel documents. Within this category we discuss cases where children are involved who in the majority of cases remain living in England while their mother is abandoned abroad. A common theme running through all these cases is that the wives are subjected to domestic servitude, isolation and domestic violence by their husbands and in-laws during the perpetuation of the marriage on the basis that their immigration status is insecure. We will also touch upon legal remedies that are available to women who fall within the third category of abandonment, having never been sponsored to the UK following marriage, and explores the lack of safeguards and redress available to them within the family law arena – what is referred to as the “justice gap” in the first article.