PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Supreme Court on Friday overturned rulings by the Family Court that had allowed a divorced woman and her two children to remain in Rhode Island for almost seven years despite an order from a North Carolina judge that they return to that state, where the children’s father lived.

The high court gave Jessica Beauregard 30 days to either comply with the North Carolina ruling of 2002 and return with the children –– now almost 12 and 10 years of age –– or seek to have that order lifted.

In concluding the Family Court erred, the high court deplored the case’s being allowed to languish “in a judicial morass for many years,” particularly when the jurisdiction of the Rhode Island Family Court was being challenged.

The years of delay to “complete a case that was both cast as an emergency and was one in which the authority of the court to hear the case was challenged, while two young lives hung in the balance, is simply inexcusable,” the high court said.

Nonetheless, the court said, “we cannot shy away from our duty to enforce the custody decree of a sister state.”

In May 2000, while living in North Carolina, Beauregard filed for divorce from Grady S. White. At the time they had two sons, one born in August 1997 and the other two summers later, in 1999.

Immediately after the divorce filing, Beauregard moved with her children to Rhode Island, where her parents lived. A North Carolina judge ruled White could visit the children in Rhode Island three days each month and that they would visit with him in North Carolina one week a month.

Soon after, Beauregard raised several accusations against White, the Supreme Court noted, including that he used excessive discipline with the boys and viewed Internet pornography, which prevented him from interacting with his children.

A North Carolina judge determined that while Beauregard “had valid reasons for moving to Rhode Island, he also believed that she had tried to ‘squeeze’ the father out of their children’s lives,” the high court stated. The judge said the children “would benefit from a strong relationship with their father” and ordered Beauregard to return to North Carolina.

In October, 2002 — “in an apparent effort to avoid compliance,” the high court stated — Beauregard sought emergency help from Rhode Island’s Family Court.

During a court hearing, Beauregard said that a psychologist had expressed concerns that moving the children to North Carolina would be detrimental to them. “She also alleged that she feared for her children’s safety, that White had threatened her with physical harm in the past and that there was an outstanding order of protection from abuse from the Rhode Island court.”

“That very day,” the high court said, a Family Court judge asserted court jurisdiction over the children.

White challenged that jurisdiction for the next two years. In July 2004 a Family Court magistrate reasserted temporary emergency jurisdiction. “Notably absent from the order,” the high court said, “was any indication of how long the order would be in effect or any future date for the parties to appear before the court.”

White eventually appealed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the case in March.

In agreeing with White’s challenges, the high court said the Family Court erred not only by “exercising jurisdiction” in the case but that the allegations against White “were insufficient to continue emergency jurisdiction.”

Beauregard could not be reached for comment. A phone message left with a North Carolina lawyer who represented her was not returned.

tmooney@projo.com