BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 24: Joe Jonas (L) and Sophie Turner attend the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Joe Jonas may be more amenable these days to forging a civil relationship with Sophie Turner as the estranged couple continue mediation this week, reportedly to decide on a joint custody agreement for their two young daughters.
But there is one reason that a 50/50 arrangement isn’t practical for Turner and Jonas, according to a family law expert. The “Game of Thrones” star has made it clear she wants to settle down in her native U.K. and raise their daughters there. Meanwhile, the American singer has proclaimed that the girls, 3 and 1, were born in the United States and thus should be raised here.
“There’s no 50/50 custody sharing on different continents,” said Los Angeles-based family law attorney Christopher Melcher, who has handled divorces involving well-off parents who hail from distant time zones.
“It’s a sad thought, but if Sophie really sees her roots in England and wants to live there, and Joe is going to live in the U.S., they can’t meaningfully share custody of kids, not when they’re living so far from each other,” Melcher said. “It really does not look good for their ability to work this out.”
Certainly, wealthy parents can afford to regularly fly back and forth across oceans, stay in hotels or maintain a residence in their ex-spouse’s home country in order to fulfill the terms of joint custody, Melcher said. They also can have their children enrolled in international schools, or taught by tutors, who can accompany the children as they travel between parents and continents.
But this peripatetic lifestyle is hard to maintain in the long run, Melcher said. For one thing, it’s exhausting. “Practically speaking, it will be parents or children, taking very long flights to see each other and that just wears people out,” Melcher said.
In addition, moving around amongst multiple homes only works when the children are young, Melcher said. By the time the kids reach second grade or older, they usually need the stability of one school and a community where they can make friends and get involved in activities.
The only way Turner and Jonas can “meaningfully” share joint custody is if one “sacrifices” and agrees to move close to the other. Either Turner puts her U.K. plans on hold until the children finish school, or Jonas bases himself near her home in England.
“It’s hard to maintain a good relationship (with children) being so far away,” Melcher said.
If neither is willing to budge on relocating across the Atlantic, a judge will have to decide the children’s primary caregiver and residence, Melcher said. Will it be with mom or with dad, in the U.K. or the U.S.? That means one parent potentially will have the children up to “90%” of the time, while the other will be “left behind” and only see the girls during the summer and on holidays, Melcher said.
“Hopefully, they will find some middle ground, but it looks bad,” Melcher said.
It’s been a little more than a month since news broke that Turner and Jonas were breaking up after four years or marriage. Things between them got ugly fast. Jonas filed for divorce in Miami and his PR team leaked stories that pushed the narrative that Turner was an immature 27-year-old who was a hard-partying, absentee mother.
Most people labeled this portrayal of Turner as misogynist spin, and the actor hit back with a lawsuit in federal court in New York City. Turner’s petition invoked 1980 The Hague Convention on “on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction” to allege that the musician was “wrongfully” keeping their daughters in the United States.
Turner also presented herself as the girls’ primary caregiver and argued that England truly is their home. She said that she and Jonas had started living in England full-time in April after she acknowledged that they had not stayed long in any one place during their marriage. She said they were purchasing a country estate near Oxford, which they planned to make their “forever home,” before their relationship broke down.
Melcher said it was “very aggressive” of Turner to invoke The Hague Convention, explaining that the law typically applies to serious cases of parental kidnapping. He also questions whether Turner had successfully made the case that England is her children’s home. “All she has to base that on really are hopes and dreams that they wanted to live in England,’ Melcher said.
For now, Turner and Jonas have agreed that they will keep their daughters in the New York City area, as their legal teams wrangle over which court should have jurisdiction over the case. Right now, documents have been filed in Miami, New York and the U.K.
Perhaps mediation will help the ex-spouses resolve some of their issues, including questions about custody. If not, the judge in the federal case has set a trial date for Jan. 2.
Originally published at Martha Ross