Things are rarely straightforward when couples break up.
Even when there are no children involved, the process of unpicking home life can sometimes be complex and heartbreaking.
However, the issues presented by determining which parent a child should live with as well as the manner and frequency of the other parent's contact with their sons or daughters have for many years had the capacity to add tensions to already fraught domestic circumstances.
A particular trend in recent years has further complicated things. The increasing ease with which people can move abroad to live and work has led to a rise in relationships between individuals of different nationalities.
Economic migration has benefited many both in terms of improving their careers and their understanding of foreign cultures but when the partnerships it helps foster fall apart, the consequences can be extremely distressing for parents and children alike.
Some mothers or fathers who disagree with their former partners choose not to involve the courts but take the law into their own hands. Unfortunately, that all too often means taking their children out of the country where they had been living. In most countries, to do so, is a criminal offence.
These situations have become especially acute in Europe. Research released last year (http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=progress.listing&cat=7) concluded that of more than 2,000 cases handled worldwide during 2008 under the 1980 Hague Convention on international parental child abduction to help handle the return of children taken by parents, half featured European countries.
Even more startling was that 700 of those instances revolved around children who had been taken between two European countries.
That the problem is growing has been made clear by one of the UK's most senior Family judges. Lord Justice Thorpe is head of International Family Justice (IFJ) for England and Wales, a London-based help desk for UK lawyers involved in international abductions.
He believes that the tendency for what he described as "dangerous parents" to flee with their children during custody disputes was now "all too common".
Lord Justice Thorpe also identified the number of cases involving Eastern Europe.
His experiences mirror the details contained within many of the current case files sat on my desk and those of my colleagues. Academic research has shown that, in 2003, Poland accounted for just one per cent of parental child abductions between Poland and the UK. Within five years, that figure had increased to 13 per cent.
While that pattern reflects the countries with which Britain has arguably seen the greatest exchange of people during the last decade, many parental child abductions - regardless of territory - feature another theme.
Most of the parents involved claim that they simply didn't know taking a child abroad without the legal consent of their former partner amounted to a crime.
It's a point which the IFJ and other bodies engaged in trying to resolve such matters, including the charity Reunite, know only too well.
The Government too is also anxious to get to grips with parental child abduction. Only last year, the Foreign Office (www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=622876482) revealed that the number of children taken to countries which had not signed the Hague Convention - and, therefore, did not have mechanisms in place to handle the return of abducted children - had risen by 10 per cent year-on-year.
Only by increasing awareness of how parental disputes can be resolved before abductions take place and by stiffening the commitment of more countries to tackle what the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has described as a "painful scourge" (www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/05/162351.htm) can the trauma suffered by the children taken and the parents who are left behind be reduced.