“I'm Moving and Taking the Kids With Me”: Move-away Cases Never Easy for Family Courts
A couple separates from one another. After months of negotiation and/or a bitter custody trial, the parties settle into a custody arrangement wherein both Mom and Dad both spend time with the children. Both parents and the children are adapting to the schedule and believe that the litigation is now behind them. Then one day Mom announces to Dad that she is moving to Kansas, and she intends to take the children with her.
In our ever-transient society, the scenario described above or one like it seems to be occurring more and more. In North Carolina, custody decisions are driven by the children’s best interests. In cases in which a parent seeks to relocate with the children, the issue becomes the whether the proposed relocation would serve the best interests of the children involved. Typically the party wishing to relocate portrays the move as one which would enhance the life of the children and ultimately benefit them. The party objecting to the move, on the other hand, points out that he would no longer be involved in the children’s lives on a daily basis due to the distance between him and the children. He – or she – argues that the children’s relocation is not in their best interests.
Family court judges in North Carolina struggle with these cases mightily. Judges look closely at the true intentions behind a parent’s relocation away from the other parent and decide whether the reasons given by the relocating parent are sufficient to allow the proposed relocation with the children. Maybe Mom has been offered a job making $30,000 more per year. Maybe her new husband has been transferred to a different state. Maybe relocating parent wishes to live in closer proximity to her extended family and the children’s cousins, etc. Are justifications like these enough for a court to allow a relocation with the children? North Carolina law does not on its face answer these difficult questions directly. When these situations arise, parents on both sides must couch their arguments in terms of the children’s best interests and hire attorneys who are creative and experienced in making the respective arguments to family court judges.
Pete McArdle is an attorney in the Charlotte office of Knox, Brotherton, Knox and Godfrey. He can be reached at 704-315-2363 or 866-704-9059 (Toll free) or pmcardle@knoxlawcenter.com.
