Two things Americans do a lot is divorce and move. Matters can get complicated when you want to do both at the same time, especially if there are children involved. Rules for moving during and after a divorce vary by state, but they're similar enough to paint a broad picture. If you want to make a change that will affect your pending court case or seriously change your children's living situation, it's a good idea to consult expert legal help to discuss your specific circumstances.
Moving Without Children: During and After the Divorce
Moving out of your old home is common during a divorce, and if the place you're going is still within the county court's jurisdiction, you should be fine. A minor relocation doesn't significantly change the facts of your case, though it is important to update the address that both the lawyers and the court have for you so you don't miss any document service or court mailings.
Moving farther away than a few freeway exits, however, can complicate your situation. If your divorce was filed in County A, for instance, and you've just moved across the state to County X, you shouldn't expect to have the case move with you, even if you're the one who filed it. Rather, the original location has the first right (and obligation) to the case. In addition, if your spouse still lives in the original location, they have a right not to be dragged to the venue of your choosing just because you moved. If it is at all possible to delay such a move until the divorce is final, you might save a lot of difficulty and gas money. Otherwise, expect to commute back to your old town for every court date unless your ex agrees to relocate the case.
Added Wrinkles: What About Kids?
Moving away from a co-parent who's involved in the children's lives is not something to be done lightly. At the very least, moving a significant distance away — even just to a different school district — is an upheaval that courts try to avoid for the good of the children. Changing counties or states, especially over the objection of your co-parent, will almost certainly require a court order. This is because any custody or visitation order is an official command from the court, detailing places and times when the other parent has a legal right to see the children. Moving far away is sure to impair that schedule, so the order must be modified before you can do it.
A distinction has to be drawn here between two types of custody: "sole" and "joint." Sole custody gives one parent the final word on where the children live, where they go to school, how they get health care and so on. All of the important decisions are in the hands of the custodial parent and, depending on the visitation rights of the other parent, the custodial party may be able to petition the court for a simple modification, called a "move-away order," that acts as permission to move someplace far enough away that the noncustodial parent will have to sacrifice access to the kids. This is most often done with a motion filed with the court and served on the other parent to give them a chance to object. If they do, you might be arguing your case in court, just as you would if the two of you shared custody.
Joint custody puts power over the children into both parents' hands. Decisions seriously affecting the children must be made together. Forcing an unwelcome change on either party is usually difficult, given the family courts' traditional reluctance to override the strenuous objections of an actively engaged parent. In this situation, the final decision will almost certainly come down to the perceived best interests of the children. Regardless of whether your custody order says "joint" or "sole," expect the court to start from whatever the current visitation status quo is, and then work out the children's interests from that, always with an eye toward the least-disruptive solution possible. You may ask the court to let you move with the children for your job, only to be told that you can't take them away from the parent who only sees them every other weekend.
Source: https://insights.itsovereasy.com/moving-away-divorce
110 mental health experts from 15 countries endorse report that recommends overnight care children from both parents after separation.
The days are past when experts advised divorced dads to make a clean break from the family and remain, at best, visitors in their children’s lives. Growing awareness that children do best with two parents, whether parents are living together or separated, has led to a trend toward shared parenting. Yet some holdouts believe that shared parenting, appropriate for older children, is ill- suited to meet the needs of young children.
Our society maintains a curious double standard when it comes to encouraging hands-on shared parenting. For instance, we want dads involved with their infants and toddlers—diapering, feeding, bathing, putting to bed, soothing in the middle of the night, cuddling in the morning. But when parents separate, some people mistakenly think that it is best for young children to spend every night in one home, usually with mom, even when this means losing the care their father has been giving them. Despite all strides in cracking gender barriers, many of us still think that it is mom’s exclusive role to care for infants and toddlers, and that we jeopardize young children’s wellbeing if we trust fathers to do the job.
The result is the common custody plan where infants and toddlers whose parents separate only get to see their dads two hours at a time, two days a week. Hurriedly loading and unloading the child in the car and driving to and from dad’s home at the end of a work day hardly lays a good foundation for a comforting and secure relationship with dad.
Fortunately, science offers clear guidance on these issues. I spent two years reviewing the relevant scientific literature and vetting my analyses with an international group of experts in the fields of early child development and divorce. The results appear in Social Science and Parenting Plans for Young Children: A Consensus Report, recently published in the American Psychological Association’s prestigious journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. The report is endorsed by 110 of the world’s leading researchers and practitioners. The endorsement by these scholars reflects a groundswell of concern among experts that misinformation about research evidence is impoverishing custody decisions and public policy.
Our first goal was to provide a balanced and accurate overview of settled, accepted research of the past 45 years relevant to parenting plans for children under the age of four whose parents have separated. Our second goal was to provide empirically supported guidelines for policy makers and for people who make custody decisions.
We found no support for the idea that children under four (some say under six) need to spend nearly all their time living with only one parent, when their other parent is also loving and attentive. Warnings against infants and toddlers spending overnight time with each parent are inconsistent with what we know about the development of strong positive parent-child relationships. Babies and toddlers need parents who respond consistently, affectionately, and sensitively to their needs. They do not need, and most do not have, one parent’s full-time, round-the-clock presence.
Many married mothers work night shifts that keep them away from their infants and toddlers at night. Like these married mothers, most single mothers do not need to worry about leaving their children in the care of their fathers. To maximize infants’ chances of having a secure lifelong bond with both parents, public policy should encourage both parents to actively participate in daytime and overnight care of their young children. Scholars who study the benefits of children’s relationships with both parents find no empirical support for the belief that mothers are more necessary or play a more important role than do fathers in their infants’ and toddlers’ lives. In short, after their separation, both parents should maximize the time they spend with their young children, including the sharing of overnight parenting time.
How did public policy and the direction of custody decisions go so wrong? It seems related to the legacy of the “motherhood mystique,” the idea that mothers are innately better suited to care for young children. This was reinforced initially by John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory. Bowlby put forward the notion that infants form enduring affectional ties with just one person, normally the mother, before all other relationships and that this relationship is both ranks higher than and serves as a template for other relationships.
A number of studies have examined this hypothesis to see if it reflects infant experience. The research shows that children develop multiple relationships at around the same time. They form relationships with more than one care giver that are independent in the sense that the relationship with mom is not a template for that with dad. Even John Bowlby came to recognize later in his career that infants would form attachments with more than one caregiver. We cannot rank these relationships.
So it is clear that we should encourage relationships with both parents. Doing so doubles the infant’s chances of having at least one high-quality relationship. Also, moms and dads make different contributions to their children’s development.
Of course, shared parenting is not for all families. Regardless of their children’s ages, parents should consider a number of factors when creating the best parenting plan. What works for one child in one family may not be best for another child in another family. Our recommendations apply to most families. Some parents are negligent, abusive, or grossly deficient in their parenting, and their children would need protection from them even in intact families, But that fact should not be used to deprive the majority of children who were being raised by two loving parents from continuing to have that care after their parents separate.
It is time to resolve our ambivalence and contradictory ideas about fathers’ and mothers’ roles in their children’s lives. If we value Dad reading Goodnight Moon to his toddler and soothing his fretful baby at 3am while the parents are living together, why withdraw our support and deprive the child of these expressions of fatherly love just because the parents no longer live together, or just because the sun has gone down?
Source: https://www.childandfamilyblog.com/social-emotional-learning/parents-divorce-regular-overnight-stays-dad-best-young-children/
