abi31

This might be a seriously dumb question but how would the authorities know if a person just left with their children (obviously one couldn't be daft enough to tell their other half in advance!) - I'm not advocating this at all as very unfair on the OH but just wondering.

Separately, I'm getting a big vibe that people who had a lot of GBP and hoped to live off it/buy a house with it really suffer as they've converted in bad rates but the people who don't take so much and just continue BAU with jobs in A$ etc do ok and really don't notice the 'everything is crazy expensive' thing. So good news for broke me

alipally

Nice idea..... Unfortunately The Hague (Sp?) convention would have you hot footing it back to Australia before you could say Qantas.... it just don't work like that... once they're here, they are Australians, it becomes their usual place of residence and you CANNOT leave the country with them without the permission of the other parent. And as the UK is a subscriber to this they will be the ones enforcing the return.

One look at the MBBTUK forum will tell you that there are already too many people in this situation...

Dorothy

They would know because the parent left behind would notify the authorities. And as Alipally says, the Hague convention comes into play when there is international child abduction. (That's what the crime of kidnapping your children and taking them out of the country is called)

http://www.ag.gov.au/Families/Pages/...abduction.aspx
http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act...display&tid=21

elice_in_oz

I don't usually join in the 'don't do it uless you have a million bucks in the bank and another in your pocket' brigade as We came with not much and did OK, but I have to say that yes, 'everything IS crazy expensive', a lot more expensive than it used to be.

By the same token though, I believe that everything is expensive in Europe too. Talking to friends and family back in France and the UK, it is clear that it's all swings and roundabouts. COL HAS gone UP everywhere. Comparing things like bills and the likes in $AU and converting into £GB makes no sense to me at the current exchange rate (or any other FX rate for that matter). Unless you are relying on savings in another currency to live (that million $ from above ), you are better off comparing costs of things in relation to earnings and income in the relevant country, not in terms of FX rate.