NEW YORK (AP) — Actor Sophie Turner sued her estranged pop star husband Joe Jonas on Thursday to force him to turn over the passports of the couple's two young daughters so she can take them to England.
Turner, who was served with divorce papers this month after four years of marriage to Jonas, said in her petition that the couple had planned to raise their daughters in her native England. It also said that the girls, ages 3 and 1, “are both fully involved and integrated in all aspects of daily and cultural life in England.”
Best known for playing Sansa Stark on HBO's “Game of Thrones,” Turner filed her petition in federal court in New York under the child abduction clauses of the Hague Convention, an international treaty aimed at compelling the return of a child taken from their country of “habitual residence.”
Turner, 27, says that she and Jonas, 34, made a mutual decision to raise their daughters in England and to relocate there in April of this year.
During part of August and September, while Jonas began a tour with his band the Jonas Brothers in the United States, Turner would be working long hours filming a television series in England. So, Turner said she and Jonas had agreed that the children would travel with Jonas and a nanny.
The plan was for Turner to travel to New York after filming wrapped on Sept. 14 to collect the children, but in the meantime “the breakdown of the parties' marriage happened very suddenly," Turner said.
According to Turner, Jonas filed for divorce in Florida on Sept. 1 and she learned about it through the media on Sept. 5. The pair issued a joint statement on their Instagram accounts on Sept. 6 saying they had mutually decided to amicably end the marriage.
Turner says she and Jonas saw each other on Sept. 17 — and she asked him for the children's passports so she could take them back to England, but Jonas refused to turn over the passports of the girls, who were born in the United States, and have dual U.S. and British citizenship.
The court filing says the girls are temporarily living with Turner in a Manhattan hotel. The Jonas Brothers were scheduled to perform in Philadelphia on Thursday and in Baltimore on Friday.
Jonas said in a statement that he is “seeking shared parenting with the kids so that they are raised by both their mother and father” and that he is “okay with the kids being raised both in the U.S. and the UK.”
“This is an unfortunate legal disagreement about a marriage that is sadly ending," he added. "When language like 'abduction' is used, it is misleading at best, and a serious abuse of the legal system at worst."
Jonas said he did not surprise Turner with divorce papers but rather filed for divorce after what he said were “multiple conversations with Sophie."
Jonas has been a pop idol since he and his brothers Nick and Kevin formed the Jonas Brothers in 2005. He and Turner met in 2016 and married in 2019.