I Want to Move Back Home – Can I Take My Children With Me?

By Richard Ian Ross, Esq., CFLS

Richard Ian Ross, Esq., CFLS, is the Managing Attorney and Certified Family Law Specialist at Richard Ross Associates ("RRA"), a Family Law Professional Corporation in Westlake Village, California. RRA is a five attorney law firm which practices exclusively family law, with a specialization in divorce, parentage, spousal and child support, child custody and visitation, complex property division, restraining orders and modifications to family law judgments. Attorneys at RRA practice primarily in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

Oftentimes while the parents of minor children are married, or during or after a divorce, or in a parentage matter (unmarried parents), a parent wants to relocate, perhaps back home close to his or her family. With regard to one parent seeking to move the minor children from their home, the term is coined "move-aways," which are always difficult cases.

When one parent is faced with the prospect of his or her children no longer living close by, it generates many emotions, often negative. Emotional-based arguments, such as the parties should alternate custodial time evenly to give the other parent sufficient options to demonstrate their parenting abilities, are not enough to convince the family courts to order their custodial plan.