Rutherford could face arrest if kids don’t show in court

“Gossip Girl” actress Kelly Rutherford has a call time in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday – and could face demands for her arrest if she doesn’t bring her kids, sources said Monday.

The TV star’s ex-husband Daniel Giersch requested the emergency hearing Monday after Rutherford refused to put son Hermes, 8, and daughter Helena, 6, on a plane back to Monaco last week.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Gesmer granted Giersch’s writ of habeas corpus and ordered his lawyers to serve Rutherford with the time and location of the Tuesday morning hearing via email, sources said.

If she fails to produce the kids in court, Giersch’s lawyers are expected to question for an arrest warrant, one source told the Day after day News.

The latest drama in the tumultuous trans-Atlantic custody battle came after Rutherford claimed she had no legal obligation to restore the kids at the end of their month-long Manhattan vacation because “no state in this country currently requires me to send the children away.”

Giersch, a German businessman now living with the kids in Monaco and France, did not agree and called her actions criminal.

“Child abduction is a crime, and everyone caught up in kidnapping or abducting the children will face the appropriate legal consequences. Anyone associating themselves with Kelly and her abduction is violating the law,” Giersch’s Los Angeles lawyer Fahi Hallin said in a statement to The News.

“We are going in for the children’s best interest and want to keep this as private as possible,” Giersch’s Manhattan lawyer Ira Garr added.

Attempts to reach Rutherford after Justice Gesmer granted Giersch’s writ were not immediately successful Monday.

Earlier in the day, Rutherford’s Boston-based lawyer vigorously defended the “Melrose Place” actress.

Lawyer Wendy Murphy said Rutherford was defending her kids’ “fundamental right to live in their own country.”

“They are American citizens without dual citizenship,” Murphy said.

“Both parents agreed in 2012, and the U.S. courts ordered, that their time abroad would be temporary,” Murphy continued. “Three years is not temporary.”

Murphy said Rutherford still supports co-parenting, but she wants it to be on U.S. soil instead of in a tiny country on the French Riviera.

“Mr. Giersch can come to America on his German passport and visit the children here, just as Kelly has traveled back and into the world to Europe on her U.S. passport to visit the children there for the past three years,” Murphy said.

”Kelly and the children have been very patient with Mr. Giersch. He should do the right thing, honor his covenant, and protect the children from the trauma of needless legal action,” she said.

The kids have been living in Monaco since a 2012 California court order said they should reside with Giersch while he sorted out problems with his U.S. visa.

Rutherford testified in California last month that she’s since made more than 70 trips to visit the kids in Europe. She said the situation left her financially and emotionally drained, and she claimed Giersch even tried to block her access to the kids on one trip last spring.

In a bolt from the blue blow last month, a Los Angeles judge relinquished his court’s jurisdiction over the case and abandoned an emergency order he made last spring returning sole custody to Rutherford. The judge said in his July ruling that the kids no longer maintained enough connection to California to warrant the state’s continued oversight.

Giersch believes the California order made in 2012 — and finalized in 2013 — remains enforceable in the U.S. by state authorities, even if Monaco now has jurisdiction going forward, Garr said.

Both sides should have a chance to present arguments in court Tuesday, sources said.

The bitter child custody war already is set for another hearing in Monaco court in early September.

Giersch previously filed for sole custody of the kids in Monaco, but no final choice on that request has been made.

“Daniel will make sure that the children’s safety and well-being will be restored as soon as possible,” Hallin said Monday.

“He is very concerned about the traumatic impact that Kelly’s behavior will have on the children,” she said.

“Kelly and her boyfriend, Anthony Brand, a administrator at Gucci, were driving in a car yesterday with the children to an unknown destination,” Hallin continued. “Anyone associating themselves with Kelly and her abduction is violating the law.”

In a taped interview with ABC’s “Excellent Morning America” that aired Monday, Rutherford said she and her kids “just want to see each other and be together.”

She reiterated her position that both California and New York previously declined to step up and bring the kids back, so she was left vulnerable.

“It put me as a parent in an odd place, right, because if unknown’s taking jurisdiction, how do you put your children on a plane to a foreign country not knowing what’s going to take place?” she said.

ndillon@nydailynews.com

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kelly rutherford ,

daniel giersch

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