The court of appeal ruled that the daughter's habitual residence is France and determined that she must be returned there. The father filed a police report and applied for the daughter's return to France under the Hague Convention after the mother decided to stay in Stockholm with the child last year when their relationship deteriorated. According to the father, the family was resident in France and had no plans to live in Sweden.
Elin Gellerfelt Wahlqvist, the mother, counters that Sweden has always been their habitual residence and they only made temporary longer trips to France. She says she neither signed a rental agreement nor an electricity contract in France, and they were still registered in her apartment in Sweden, their daughter attended child health care and followed the Swedish vaccination program, she was in queue for preschool, and Elin kept her employment contract in Sweden. The daughter was born in Sweden and has both Swedish and French citizenship, and during Elin's parental leave, the family spent a longer period in southern France.
The district court had previously ruled that the daughter has the strongest connection to Sweden and rejected the father's request. The Hague Convention on international child abductions aims to protect children from being unlawfully taken to another country or retained in a country, with about 100 countries as parties including France. In 2025, 107 new child abduction cases were reported to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, of which 82 were taken from Sweden and 25 were taken to Sweden.
The event has now gained widespread attention on social media.