Moving with the Children After Your Divorce

During a divorce you have many decisions to make about your life afterward. If you have children, your choices will affect them. One of the more complicated decisions you will have to make about yourself and your children is where you will live. After all you and your children go through, you may now have to leave your home and relocate, which is no easy thing. Your children may find it particularly difficult. Of course, moving with the children after your divorce can also affect your divorce, itself.

Relocation and Negotiating Custody Agreements

During custody and parenting negotiations, a parent who wants to relocate with the children will affect how things are determined. Whether or not a parent can leave with the children at all will have to be decided. If a custody order already exists, but a parent has no other choice than to move, that may be an issue.

If the question of relocation with the children arises, a first step should be to discuss the issue between spouses. If the two can come to an agreement on their own, then making arrangements during divorce should be much easier, as would many aspects of the divorce if the two parties could come to agreements on everything. Once these arrangements have been made legal and official during divorce-also known as a custody order-then a parent may leave with the children.

If a custody order already exists, and then the parent decides that he or she needs to leave with the children, the order will have to be modified. That will require an official request to the court. Of course, it is also possible for two spouses to discuss this first, if they believe they can come to an agreement. This arrangement will still have to be made legal, however. As long as the spouses agree, the court is likely to sign off on the custody arrangements and changes.

Of course, if the two parents cannot agree on custody arrangements and relocation, things can become difficult. Parents can try to work things out alone, or a mediator may be necessary. If one parent wants to move some distance, it will probably be necessary to negotiate extended child visitations, holiday time, and possibly even a semester, or season, with the parent remaining in the original location. In the end, if the parents cannot come to terms, a judge will have to decide.

The judge will decide based upon the child’s best interests. While adults are able to make their own decisions about their lives, it is the children who are the court’s concern. There are many factors a judge will consider. The child’s relationships to parents, parents’ work and legal histories, nearby family, schooling, and more are subject to evaluation.

Moving with your children after divorce, however important it may be, is a very serious and complicated matter. Let the attorneys at Miller Law help you make your requests, as well as with any other aspects of your divorce in Florida.