Moving Child Visitation Order

by Stacey from Asheville, North Carolina

We recently were awarded relocation of child from Jacksonville, Florida to Asheville, NC in July 2010 because my ex husband never bothered to spend adequate time with our son the first 8 yrs of his life.

I remarried and moved on with our lives to better his schooling and living conditions in a much safer area of North Carolina.

My ex husband works as a child abuse investigator for DCF to beat it all.

After we moved on with our lives in a much happier environment, he has made it very difficult by forcing his visitations on our son whether the Li'l guy wants to go or not.

With there being 500mi difference between our residences and the economical expenses for travel, its caused significant amounts of issues to arise.

My ex has been paying his $500/mo support but it cost us more than that just to take off work to accommodate the forced visitations by my ex only because it inconveniences my new husband and my own schedules. Not because he wants to see our son that he's never had a viable relationship with until we moved away.

How can I get the visitation schedule modified to be enforced in our residential state of NC so there will no longer be a conflict of interest because my ex is tied to the judicial system there?

It's not okay with me that my son is being forced to be with his father that he's never had a relationship with and to not spend any time with his grandparents and other family in Fla that he's grown up with and cause financial drain on my new marriage just to appease my ex husband.

The only reason hes pushing visitation is to make it hard on me for moving on with my life. During his visitations my son is taken care of by my ex's ex girlfriends nanny of my sons half brother and sister out of wedlock, not my ex husband at all. Please help...

Answer to Florida Child Visitation Question

Dear Stacey,

Jurisdiction for custody and visitation cases is governed by the UCCJEA act.

And because of the circumstances you describe in your question, there does not appear to be a clear way forward.

Of course, only a lawyer can tell you what your legal choices are and what you should do.

Having said that, you should familiarize yourself with the UCCJEA act and read up on the parts that explain Modification Jurisdiction and the Exclusive, Continuing Jurisdiction sections.


Modification Jurisdiction

The UCCJEA addresses courts’ jurisdiction to modify existing child-custody or visitation determinations in two complementary sections:

• section 202 establishes rules of continuing jurisdiction in the decree-granting State, and
• section 203 governs when another State may modify an existing decree.

Exclusive, continuing jurisdiction.

The UCCJEA adopted a rule of exclusive, continuing jurisdiction similar to that in the PKPA. Under the UCCJEA, an original decree court that exercised jurisdiction consistent with the Act has exclusive, continuing jurisdiction to modify its decree until one of the following occurs:

• The original decree court loses significant connection jurisdiction.

• The child, the child’s parents, and any person acting as the child’s parent no longer live in the State.

Only the decree State may determine whether it has significant connection jurisdiction. That is, a sister State’s court may not substitute its judgment on this issue for that of the decree State’s court. By contrast, either State court may determine that all parties identified in the statute have left the State.

It is usually up to the judge in the original jurisdiction (in your case, the state of Florida) to determine whether a transfer of jurisdiction is warranted. A lawyer might advise you to petition the original court to modify your existing Relocation & Parenting Plan order.

However, this is a technically difficult area of the law, and although you have a right to pursue this Pro Se, I would certainly recommend that you seek the advice of a family law attorney in both Florida and North Carolina.

You can use our recommended Family Lawyer Referral service (see Notice below) or you can try the Bar Associations in Florida and North Carolina. Good luck to you.

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