Custody & Kidnapping

Whether or not a parent can move with his/her children is a complicated legal question. It depends on a lot of different factors, and we strongly recommend that you talk to a lawyer in your state who specializes in custody before making any decisions. You can find free and paid lawyers on our website [HYPERLINK]. Another option may be to call the Legal Resource Center for Violence Against Women, which specializes in interstate custody matters for abused women. They may be able to connect you with an attorney in your current state who can advise you about the state’s laws on parental kidnapping. Their number is 301-270-1550.

I cannot tell you specifically whether you can or cannot move since I cannot give legal advice. However, I will try to provide some general, basic information that may be useful.

The first thing to consider is that in many states, once a custody petition is filed, an automatic order goes into place that prohibits either parent from leaving the state (“jurisdiction”) with the child while the case is going on. Violating this can mean that the parent can be held in contempt of court. Do you have all of the custody papers that you were served with? You may want to review them to see if anything has any sort of warning about not taking the child out of the jurisdiction. Even if it isn’t written in there, you may want to be sure to ask a lawyer about this if you are able to speak to a STATE lawyer who is knowledgeable about custody laws in STATE. Another thing to consider is that even if there is not an automatic order that prevents a parent from taking a child out of jurisdiction, it may upset the judge to see that one parent moved out of state while a custody case was pending and this could reflect badly upon that parent in the custody trial. Again, I can’t speak to how this might be considered in your case specifically but hopefully you can talk this through with a local lawyer.

The next thing that a person may have to consider is whether the state has a custodial interference law that will apply. We have the language of STATE’s custodial interference (parental kidnapping) law on our website [FIND THIS ON CRIMES PAGE AND CLICK ON IT, THEN HYPERLINK TO THE STATUTE]. However, these laws are hard to interpret and easy to misinterpret. If a state’s custodial interference laws do not allow a parent to move away with a child, the parent may have file in court for custody and to specifically ask the judge for permission to relocate. At that point, a judge would consider many factors and may decide whether or not to allow the move. It is important to get a lawyer to explain how the law may apply to your situation.

Another option that some people consider is to flee the state first and then file for temporary emergency custody in the new state that they are fleeing to. You can read more information about this on our parental kidnapping page. However, often this may be a hard standard to meet in order to convince a judge in a new state to grant emergency custody so it’s often better to get legal advice about one’s specific situation before attempting this. Also, this type of emergency custody wouldn’t necessarily prevent the other parent from continuing with the custody petition in the original state.

Depending on the situation and the state, the judge may order the child to be returned to the state while deciding whether to allow the move. The judge may even remove custody from the parent who left the state, and give the child to the other parent while the custody case is going on. The parent who moved may also have to return to the state to be present in court for the court case unless s/he gets permission to appear in court by phone. What a judge will do varies greatly from one judge to the next.