Moving with your children

You have a job offer three states away. Or your parents are aging and you want to be near them. Or the rent where you are has become impossible. Moving with your children is not a housing decision — it is a court matter, and in most states it has a clock attached that starts long before the removal van.

The first thing to know: the trigger is not a national number

People ask about “the fifty-mile rule”. It exists — in Florida and Tennessee. It is 20 miles in Indiana, 25 in Illinois, 60 in Alabama and Oregon, 75 in Louisiana and Oklahoma, 100 in Arizona, Michigan, South Carolina and Wisconsin, and 150 miles in Iowa and Utah. Thirteen states use a mileage trigger at all.

The rest use something else entirely: a state line, a school district (Washington), a duration test rather than a distance (Missouri triggers on a 90-day change of residence; Florida combines 50 miles with 60 consecutive days), or a purely functional test — whether the move “significantly impairs” the other parent’s relationship, which has no number in it at all.

All fifty, with the statute and the notice period →

Notice is not permission, and missing it is expensive

Where a notice period exists it runs from 30 to 90 days, and it is a duty to tell, not a request to be granted. Several statutes then make the failure to give it count against you in the substantive decision:

  • Illinois may treat unexcused failure to notify “(i) as a factor in determining whether the parent’s relocation is in good faith; and (ii) as a basis for awarding reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.”

    750 ILCS 5/609.2(d)

  • Pennsylvania may treat it as “(1) a factor in making a determination regarding the relocation; (2) a factor in determining whether custody rights should be modified.”

    23 Pa.C.S. § 5337(j)

  • Pennsylvania goes further, and this is the sentence to read twice if you are tempted to go first and argue later: “If a party relocates with the child prior to a full expedited hearing, the court shall not confer any presumption in favor of the relocation.”

Who has to prove what — and it is not the same anywhere

This is the part that decides cases, and the states have taken genuinely opposite positions on it.

Washington

Presumed yes

Unusual, and strongly in the moving parent’s favor:

“There is a rebuttable presumption that the intended relocation of the child will be permitted. A person entitled to object… may rebut the presumption by demonstrating that the detrimental effect of the relocation outweighs the benefit of the change to the child and the relocating person…”

Eleven factors follow, and the statute adds a warning to anyone tempted to rank them: “The factors listed in this section are not weighted. No inference is to be drawn from the order in which the following factors are listed.”

RCW 26.09.520, amended 2025

Florida

No presumption, shifting burden

The subsection is literally captioned “NO PRESUMPTION”. And Florida is the only state we checked that hands the burden back:

“The parent… wishing to relocate has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that relocation is in the best interest of the child. If that burden of proof is met, the burden shifts to the nonrelocating parent… to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the proposed relocation is not in the best interest of the child.”

Fla. Stat. § 61.13001(7)–(8)

California

Presumptive right to move

California put its leading case into the statute itself — Fam. Code § 7501(b) declares the intent to affirm In re Marriage of Burgess. The standard, as a published Court of Appeal opinion states it: “a parent with sole physical custody has the presumptive right to relocate with her child for any sound, good faith reason,” and the other parent “bears the substantial burden” of showing detriment.

Cal. Fam. Code § 7501

Pennsylvania

Burden on the mover — and on both

“The party proposing the relocation has the burden of establishing that the relocation will serve the best interest of the child… Each party has the burden of establishing the integrity of that party’s motives in either seeking the relocation or seeking to prevent it.” Ten factors, with “weighted consideration to those factors which affect the safety of the child.”

23 Pa.C.S. § 5337(h), (i)

Two more worth knowing. New York has no relocation statute at all; the standard comes from Tropea v. Tropea (1996), which deliberately refused to set presumptions: “each relocation request must be considered on its own merits… with predominant emphasis being placed on what outcome is most likely to serve the best interests of the child.” And New Jersey changed its law in 2017 — Bisbing v. Bisbing abandoned the older framework that favored the parent of primary residence, replacing it with a straight best-interests analysis in contested cases where parents share legal custody. Anything written about New Jersey relocation before 2017 is wrong.

Tropea v. Tropea, 87 N.Y.2d 727 · Bisbing v. Bisbing, 230 N.J. 309 (2017)

Your reason matters, and some reasons are named in the statute

“For work” and “to be near family” are not vague appeals. In several states they are enumerated factors, which means the statute has already decided they are legitimate — your job is to evidence them.

  • Employment and economic improvement. Florida asks about “the current employment and economic circumstances of each parent… and whether the proposed relocation is necessary to improve the economic circumstances of the parent… seeking relocation.”
  • Education. Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Colorado all name educational opportunity. Illinois and Colorado use identical wording: “the educational opportunities for the child at the existing location and at the proposed new location.”
  • Extended family. Illinois and Colorado both name “the presence or absence of extended family at the existing location and at the proposed new location.” If you are moving to be near your parents, that is a statutory factor, not sentiment.
  • A new spouse’s job — named in exactly one statute we found. Arizona permits a temporary relocation where a parent is “required by circumstances of health, safety, employment or eviction of that parent or that parent’s spouse.” Everywhere else it is argued, not cited.

    A.R.S. § 25-408(F)(1)

And the reasons that will sink you, named out loud

Arizona is the bluntest. The court weighs “whether the relocation is being made or opposed in good faith and not to interfere with or to frustrate the relationship between the child and the other parent,” and separately “the extent to which either parent may intend to gain a financial advantage regarding continuing child support obligations.”

Pennsylvania looks for “an established pattern of conduct of either party to promote or thwart the relationship of the child and the other party.” Note that both cut both ways — a parent opposing a move in bad faith is equally exposed.

Out of the country

What the statutes do not say, which is the answer

We searched the full text of every relocation statute we retrieved — Washington, Florida, Illinois, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, California and Massachusetts — for “Hague”, “country”, “international” and “foreign”. Not one of them treats an international move differently from an interstate one, and none requires the court to consider whether the destination is a Hague Convention partner.

Arizona’s trigger is simply to “relocate the child outside the state”; Massachusetts’s is removal “out of this commonwealth”; New Jersey’s is “out of its jurisdiction”. Florida comes closest with an enforcement-risk factor — “the likelihood of compliance with the substitute arrangements by the relocating parent… once he or she is out of the jurisdiction of the court” — which is not international-specific but is the hook an objecting parent would use.

So the international layer is not in the relocation statute. It is in the passport rules, the Hague Convention and your own order — and whether the destination is a Convention partner matters enormously even though no relocation statute says so. That is on the travel page, including the list of countries the United States does not treat as partners.

Does asking to move put your custody back on the table?

Sometimes yes, expressly, and this is a strategic question rather than a technical one.

  • Illinois says yes, in one sentence: “A parent’s relocation constitutes a substantial change in circumstances for purposes of Section 610.5.” So the move opens the whole allocation.
  • California says no: “a move-away is not enough, by itself, to justify a reexamination of an existing custody order.”
  • Colorado takes a third route: an intent to relocate is an enumerated ground that lifts both the ordinary bar on modifying parenting time and the two-year bar on successive motions.
  • Illinois also has the quiet good-news provision: if the other parent signs the notice and you file it, “relocation shall be allowed without any further court action” — though the court still modifies the parenting plan to match. Agreement is by far the cheapest route, and the statute is built to reward it.

What to do, in order

Read your own order first. It may contain a radius clause, a notice requirement or a consent requirement that is stricter than your state’s statute. The order governs.
Work out whether your move is even a “relocation”. Mileage, state line, school district, duration, or a functional test — check which your state uses. A move across town can trigger the statute in Indiana and not in Iowa.
Diarise the notice deadline backwards from the move. Where a period exists it is typically 30 to 90 days, and in several states missing it becomes evidence against your good faith and a basis for a fee award.
Ask for agreement before you ask a judge. In Illinois a signed notice ends the matter without a hearing. Everywhere else, an agreed relocation is faster and cheaper than a contested one by an order of magnitude.
Build the record your statute asks for. If the factors name employment, education and extended family — and in most states they do — then the offer letter, the school comparison and the evidence of family support are the case. Not how you feel about it.
Do not move first. In Pennsylvania it forfeits any presumption in your favor. Everywhere else it makes you the person who acted unilaterally, in front of the judge deciding your good faith.

How this page was built

Relocation statutes, notice periods and distance triggers for all fifty states were read on each legislature’s own site. The standards — burden of proof, presumptions and factor lists — come from fifteen states’ statutes and high-court opinions, read on the legislature’s or the court’s own site. No law-firm content marketing.

Two honest gaps. Texas: no relocation statute exists, and we could not retrieve Texas appellate authority — the state’s statute site now serves a JavaScript shell with no retrievable text — so we name no Texas case. Georgia: the OCGA is not freely published and we could not verify a Georgia standard, so we state none. Michigan: the legislature’s site fails TLS validation from here, so MCL 722.31’s text is not quoted; the burden of proof comes from a Michigan court source instead and is marked as such.

Found a statute that has changed? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date.

Keep reading

Sources last checked30 August 2026
Page published30 August 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.