Last week, we heard that Kelly Rutherford of Gossip Girl had been awarded temporary sole custody of her two children, who have lived in Monaco for three years with their German father, Daniel Giersch. Rutherford was given custody of son Hermes, 8, and daughter Helena, 5, until a hearing in California on June 15. Rutherford filed an emergency motion which resulted in the ruling after she was blocked by Giersch from returning to the US with the children. Giersch and his lawyer requested that Rutherford hand over the children’s US passports before the visit, as is said to be specified in the custody agreement. Rutherford refused to do this and got the ball rolling to get custody. She’s been fighting for more custody rights since 2012, and has used the press to try to further her case. Giersch has been relatively quiet until this latest incident.

After the ruling, People Magazine ran a very pro-Rutherford story analyzing her legal options and speculating on what the court might do if Giersch refused to let the children go with their mother, in violation of the court order. Rutherford’s friend, legal analyst Dan Abrams, was positive about her chances of regaining primary physical custody if Giersch decided to violate the court order. It seemed like Rutherford was hoping for this to happen so that she could turn the tables on Giersch.

Now that Giersch’s side has had time to respond, the court order granting Rutherford temporary custody was halted by a different LA county judge, Maren E. Nelson. (Nelson is not the original judge who granted Giersch custody.) Giersch’s side claims that Monaco now has jurisdiction over the case, and that Rutherford’s side misrepresented her rights when they obtained the temporary custody ruling.

A court order that granted actress Kelly Rutherford temporary custody of her children to allow her to bring them back to Los Angeles from Monaco was halted Thursday.

Judge Maren E. Nelson, who presides over family law courts in Los Angeles, halted a ruling by another judge who expressed concerns that Rutherford’s former husband violated terms of a 2013 custody order that allowed the children to live abroad.

Rutherford… has accused ex-husband Daniel Giersch of preventing her from seeing their children, which he denies. A summary of a hearing where Rutherford got custody last week didn’t specify how Giersch may have violated the 2013 order.

His lawyer, Fahi Takesh Hallin, filed documents showing that a Monaco court now has jurisdiction over the children and claimed that Rutherford “made fraudulent statements, and lied and made misrepresentations by omission” to gain temporary custody…

Nelson’s ruling prevents Rutherford from taking custody of her son and daughter until after judges in Monaco and Los Angeles confer about the case. That conversation is scheduled to take place June 11.

The way the case proceeds will be governed by rules that take effect when parents involved in a custody dispute live in different states or countries, said Steven Mindel, a Los Angeles divorce attorney who is not affiliated with the case.

Conferences between judges in two countries on custody issues are rare but occur once or twice a year, Mindel said. He said the California court may relinquish jurisdiction over the case since Rutherford has moved to New York and Giersch lives in Monaco…

Rutherford also has accused her ex-husband of trying to have a Monaco court change their citizenship. Giersch’s filing states that the Monaco court does not have the authority to do that, and no request to alter the children’s dual U.S.-German citizenship has been made.

[From Associated Press/Yahoo]

Thank you to those of you who commented with the PDF/Image file of Rutherford and Giersch’s original 2012 custody ruling. The ruling confirms that Rutherford’s lawyer got Giersch deported and that the judge heavily based her decision on this. The ruling also includes stipulations as to what a potential outcome might be if the jurisdiction of the case was taken over by a foreign court, namely France. (That’s on page 24-25 of the original document.) The judge basically states that if France was to take over the case she trusts that their court would uphold the rights of both parents. Maybe some of our legal experts can better explain this.

Regardless, Rutherford seems to have fudged the facts to obtain temporary custody, and we’ll find out on June 11, after both sides confer, what the outcome will be. She could have avoided all this and taken the children with her for the summer if she would have handed over their passports. This wasn’t about getting the children to come visit for the summer, it was about getting custody back permanently.

Header image is from 2007. Images of Giersch are from 2009. Rutherford is shown with Hermes in 2013. Credit: WENN.com and FameFlynet