On November 4, 2026, a ruling from the Belize High Court formally closed a years-long cross-border custody dispute between Jasmine Hartin and Andrew Ashcroft, the father of the couple’s two minor children, by striking down Hartin’s 2022 appeal of an initial family court custody decision. Presiding Justice Nadine Nabie determined that the entire appeal had become purely academic and no longer served any practical legal purpose, following the issuance of an unchallenged, final custody order by the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) judiciary that neither party chose to appeal. The legal chain of events stretches back to May 25, 2022, when the Belize Family Court first granted full legal custody of the two children to Ashcroft. Within hours of the ruling, Hartin filed an immediate appeal, alleging the presiding magistrate should have recused themselves over claims of apparent bias, a contention Ashcroft has consistently disputed. The High Court never moved to issue a ruling on that specific bias claim, as subsequent cross-border developments rendered the entire appeal moot. In the narrow window between the May 25 Belize ruling and May 28, 2022, Ashcroft relocated the two children to the TCI, a move that sparked conflicting accounts from both parties: Hartin asserted she had no prior knowledge of the relocation and never gave her consent, while Ashcroft maintained the original Belize custody order granted him sole decision-making authority over the children’s residence, with supporting evidence cited in the ruling that he had notified Hartin of his planned move in advance. Justice Nabie explicitly declined to issue a formal finding on whether the cross-border relocation was legally permissible. More than a year later, in May 2023, Hartin filed a petition seeking formal access to her children at the Providenciales Magistrate’s Court in the TCI, with Ashcroft submitting a competing custody filing roughly one week afterward. Over 15 months of proceedings followed, including a full review of a court-appointed social worker’s detailed welfare report, before Resident Magistrate Oreika Selver-Gardiner issued a final, permanent order on August 27, 2024. That ruling retained full legal custody for Ashcroft, and established a structured shared access schedule for Hartin: alternating one-week stays with the children during the school term, and equal shared time across all school holiday periods, with the order remaining fully enforceable until both children reach the age of 18 unless modified by a TCI court at a later date. In her 2026 ruling, Justice Nabie emphasized that overturning the original 2022 Belize Family Court order would deliver no tangible benefit to Hartin, noting that such a reversal would not alter the existing TCI custody arrangement, expand her access rights, or compel the children to return to reside in Belize. She further clarified that the Belize High Court holds no jurisdictional authority to override rulings from TCI judicial bodies, and remanding the case back to the lower Belize Family Court would serve no practical purpose, as the children have not resided in any Belize administrative district for years, and all up-to-date evidence related to their ongoing welfare is held within the TCI court system. The ruling also acknowledged Hartin’s stated motivations for participating in the TCI legal process, with Justice Nabie formally accepting evidence that Hartin’s decision to relocate and engage with the TCI judiciary was driven primarily by a desire to remain geographically close to her two children. The judge noted this sympathetic context did not, however, override the legal reality that the TCI court had afforded both parents full opportunity to present their cases before issuing a final, unappealed custody order. As a final provision of the ruling, the court ordered that each party bear their own accumulated legal costs related to the dismissed Belize appeal.