In Ly v Heu, 296 F.Supp.2d 1009 (D. Minnesota, 2003) the father, a citizen of France, brought action against child's mother, a United States resident living in Minnesota, under the Hague Convention and International Child Abduction Remedies Act for return of child born to the parties during their marriage in France. The

District Court entered judgment in favor of the mother and directed that child not be returned to France. The father then moved to amend judgment to grant him access rights and the court held that it lacked jurisdiction to issue an order to secure the father's access rights. The court held that authority it previously had when it had to fashion provisional remedies to protect the child's well-being during the pendency of the action no longer existed once it entered judgment in favor of mother, and thus, it lacked jurisdiction to issue order to secure father's access rights, since it was no longer "exercising jurisdiction of an action" for return of a child. The court noted that few federal courts have had occasion to examine the question whether federal jurisdiction over proceedings under the Hague Convention includes power to issue orders to secure access rights and that the consensus among those that have considered the issue is that such jurisdiction does not exist. (Citing Wiggill v. Janicki, 262 F.Supp.2d 687 (S.D.W.Va.2003); Fernandez v. Yeager, 121 F.Supp.2d 1118 (W.D.Mich.2000); Bromley v. Bromley, 30 F.Supp.2d 857 (E.D.Pa.1998). ICARA provides that "the United States shall have concurrent original jurisdiction of actions arising under the Convention." 42 U.S.C. 11603(a). There is, however, reason to doubt that the Convention provides a judicial remedy for violations of a parent's visitation rights. Article 12 of the Convention, which addresses procedures to effectuate the return of a wrongfully removed child, specifically refers to action by the "judicial or administrative authority" of a member nation. In contrast, Article 21 of the Convention, which deals with "organizing or securing the effective exercise of rights of access" to a child, makes no mention of recourse to a judicial authority.

Rather, a parent must apply to the "Central Authorit[y]" of a nation to secure enforcement of his or her rights of access. The "central authority" for the United States is the United States Department of State. See Exec. Order No. 12,648, 53 Fed.Reg. 30,637 (Aug. 11, 1988). The lack of parallelism between Article 12 and Article 21 has led the district courts that have considered the issue to conclude that the Convention creates no judicial power to enforce rights of access. The authority the court previously had to fashion provisional remedies under section 11604 no longer exists. Further, the court agreed with the conclusions of Wiggill, Bromley and Fernandez that federal courts lack jurisdiction to issue final orders under the Convention to secure rights of access.