“If your ex wants to relocate out of the state or out of the county with your children, what should you do?

First question would be, what kind of ex are we talking about? Is it an ex-spouse? And is there a judgment for divorce or dissolution of marriage that contains orders regarding the children? Is it an ex relationship? And are there orders related to that ex relationship, meaning custody and visitation orders perhaps from a parentage judgment?

That’s important because typically those orders would contain provisions that would indicate what is required to move away, like a notice provision, and a provision that the parents have to agree. And if the parents don’t agree then guess what, you have to go to court and the court will make the determination.

So if you don’t have any of that – let’s say that you have a relationship that ended and you have a child or children from that ended relationship and everything has gone so far by agreement, informal agreement, and that’s been great. And now it’s no longer agreeable and somebody wants to move, what should you do?

First thing you should do is try to talk to them and see if there’s a workaround. If not, then I would probably file something in court that would allow the court to 1) make orders and determine this issue and 2) have some kind of temporary restraining order that would automatically go in place that would prevent that person from moving away with the children until the court determined the issue. That might be a petition for custody. That might be a different kind of petition depending on the case. Either way, I would check with a lawyer. I would make sure that it was done correctly, because the last thing I would want to do is lose my children.”