Devendra Kumar
Actress Sophie Turner has filed a petition in federal court in New York, seeking the return of her two young daughters to England, where she claims the couple had planned to raise them. Turner, best known for her role as Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, filed the petition under the child abduction clauses of the Hague Convention, an international treaty aimed at compelling the return of a child taken from their country of “habitual residence.” The couple’s daughters, aged one and three, have dual US and British citizenship and were born in the United States.
Turner claims that she and her estranged husband, Joe Jonas, made a mutual decision to raise their daughters in England and relocate there in April of this year. During the summer, while Jonas was on tour with his band the Jonas Brothers in the United States, Turner would be working long hours filming a television series in England. The plan was for her to travel to New York after filming wrapped up on September 14th to collect the children, but the breakdown of their marriage occurred suddenly. Jonas filed for divorce in Florida on September 1, and Turner learned about it through the media on September 5th.
The couple issued a joint statement on their Instagram accounts on September 6th, saying they had mutually decided to amicably end their marriage. However, Turner claims that when she asked Jonas for the children’s passports so she could take them back to England, he refused to hand them over. The court filing says the girls are currently living with Turner in a Manhattan hotel.
Jonas, on the other hand, has said he is seeking shared parenting with the children, so they can be raised by both their mother and father. He claims he did not surprise Turner with divorce papers but rather filed for divorce after “multiple conversations with Sophie.” Jonas also stated that he is OK with the children being raised both in the US and the UK.
The dispute over the custody of their two young daughters has left Turner seeking the protection of the courts to ensure the children’s return to England. The outcome of the case remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: the tumultuous end of the celebrity couple’s marriage has taken a dramatic turn, with both parties seeking the best interests of their children.