Long-distance parenting plan: what goes in it when parents live in different states
- A long-distance parenting plan is a parenting plan for parents who live too far apart for a weekly exchange. It covers everything a standard plan does, then adds the parts distance forces: which school breaks go to which parent, how the child travels and who pays, and how the child stays in contact with the parent they are not with.
- The distance line is set by the state or by the parents. Florida’s court form is for a move of more than 50 miles from the residence at the time of the last order. Oregon’s long-distance schedule is suggested for parents who live 180 miles or more apart.
- When parents live in different states, which state’s court decides custody is answered by the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, in force in every state except Massachusetts. Its starting point is the child’s home state: where the child lived with a parent for the six consecutive months before the case was filed.
- The schedule is built from blocks rather than weekdays. Oregon’s model gives the distant parent one weekend a month during the school year, a summer block that grows from three weeks at age six to as much as eight weeks by age nine, and alternating school breaks and holiday weekends.
- The plan turns into a list of dates: the school calendar obtained by a set day, the summer dates chosen by May 1, the flight details sent so many days ahead, the call on departure and on arrival. Each parent’s own record of those dates is what shows, later, that the plan was followed.
- What is a long-distance parenting plan?
- Which state’s court handles custody when parents live in different states?
- What does a long-distance custody schedule look like?
- What does the plan say about travel and exchanges?
- How does the plan handle contact between visits?
- What does your own record show under a long-distance plan?
- Frequently asked questions
What is a long-distance parenting plan?
A long-distance parenting plan is the parenting plan a court uses when the parents live too far apart for the child to move between two homes in the same week. It answers the same questions a standard plan answers, which parent the child lives with, who makes decisions, how each parent gets school and medical information, and then answers the questions distance adds: which parent has the summer and the school breaks, how the child gets from one home to the other, who pays for the trip, and how the child talks to the parent they are away from.
Two states publish the plan as a court form, and both are useful because they show what a court expects to see written down. Florida’s Supreme Court Approved Family Law Form 12.995(c), the Relocation/Long Distance Parenting Plan, is the form for a parent who is planning to relocate their own or the child’s principal residence more than 50 miles from the residence at the time of the last order or the filing of the case. Its instructions say that, at a minimum, the plan must describe in adequate detail how the parties will share the daily tasks of raising the child, the time-sharing schedule, who is responsible for health care and school matters including the address used for school registration, the methods and technologies the parties will use to stay in contact with the child, and any transportation arrangements related to time-sharing.
Oregon’s Judicial Department publishes a Medium/Long Distance Parenting Plan with a long-distance schedule attachment, Attachment 4B, which it suggests for parents who live 180 miles or more apart. The attachment says the goal of the schedule is to make sure the children have enough contact with their home base and the parent they live with, can take part in age-appropriate activities, and have as much time as possible with the other parent. That is a fair summary of what every long-distance plan is trying to balance.
“Unlike more common arrangements where parents may live minutes apart, long-distance plans must consider school breaks, travel time, and the cost of transportation.”
Two situations produce a long-distance plan. In the first, the parents already live far apart when the case begins, because one of them moved before there was any order, or because the relationship ended across a distance. In the second, there is an existing order and one parent wants to relocate. The second situation has its own process, notice and, if the other parent objects, a hearing, which our guides on moving out of state with joint custody and the reasons a judge will deny relocation cover. Whichever way a family arrives at the distance, the plan that follows has the same parts, and this guide is about those parts.
Which state’s court handles custody when parents live in different states?
Usually the child’s home state, and once a court has made a custody order, that court keeps the case for as long as the child or a parent still lives there.
Every state except Massachusetts has enacted the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, the UCCJEA, which exists so that two states do not both issue orders about the same child. California’s version, in its Family Code, is representative. Section 3402 defines the home state as “the state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent for at least six consecutive months immediately before the commencement of a child custody proceeding.” Section 3421 says a California court can make an initial custody order only if California is the child’s home state on the day the case is filed, or was the home state within the six months before and a parent still lives there, or no other state qualifies. Section 3422 says that once a California court has made a custody order consistent with those rules, it has “exclusive, continuing jurisdiction” over that order until a court finds that neither the child nor the child and a parent have a significant connection with the state, or that the child and both parents no longer live there.
In plain terms: a parent who moves to another state cannot start over in the new state’s court. The state that entered the order keeps it while the other parent and the child are still there, and a request to change the schedule goes back to that court. A parent who lives in a state where the child has never lived cannot usually open a custody case there either, because it is not the child’s home state. There are exceptions, including for emergencies, and which court has the case is a question with real consequences that an attorney in the relevant state should answer for your facts. What the act settles for most families is that there is one court, and that it is the court where the child has lived.
The state in which a child lived with a parent, or a person acting as a parent, for at least six consecutive months immediately before a custody case was filed. For a child under six months old, the state where the child has lived since birth. The definition is in section 102 of the uniform act and in each state’s enacted version, for example California Family Code section 3402. It decides which state’s court can make the first custody order.
What does a long-distance custody schedule look like?
Blocks, not weekdays. A standard schedule alternates days within a week. A long-distance schedule keeps the child in one home during the school term and gives the other parent concentrated time when school is out, with a monthly weekend where the distance allows it.
Oregon’s Attachment 4B lays this out by age, and its options are a good picture of what courts and mediators consider normal. For a child aged six and older, the routine option is one weekend every month, from 6 p.m. Friday until 6 p.m. Sunday. Winter break goes to the distant parent for one week every year, or two weeks in alternating years. Spring break and Thanksgiving break go to the distant parent every year or in alternating years. The four three-day weekends that include a legal holiday can go to the distant parent from Friday evening to Monday evening. The child’s birthday alternates.
Summer is where the time is. For a child aged six to nine, the Oregon options are three weeks, four weeks, or six weeks, split into blocks with at least a week back with the other parent between them. From age nine to sixteen, the options rise to four, six, or eight weeks, taken as one block or two. From sixteen to eighteen, the form drops to a two-week or four-week block, with a note that scheduling at that age may take the teenager’s activities, job and school requirements into account. The Illinois attorneys whose page ranks alongside the forms describe the same shape: most long-distance plans there allocate six to eight consecutive weeks of summer to the distant parent.
| Child’s age | Routine time (Oregon Attachment 4B, option 1) | Summer options | School breaks and holidays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 18 months | Visiting parent travels to the child’s locale: once every two months, up to 8 hours a day for up to 5 days in a row | Not separate | No fixed holiday schedule unless agreed |
| 18 months to 3 | Same, with a 24-hour period after the third day as an option | Not separate | No fixed holiday schedule unless agreed |
| 3 to 6 | One weekend a month, or additional periods of up to 4 days six times a year | Up to three 1-week blocks a year as an alternative | Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthday in alternating years |
| 6 to 9 | One weekend a month, 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Sunday | 3, 4 or 6 weeks in blocks | Winter break 1 week a year or 2 weeks alternating; spring and Thanksgiving breaks alternating or every year; 3-day holiday weekends |
| 9 to 16 | One weekend a month | 4, 6 or 8 weeks, in one block or two | Same as 6 to 9 |
| 16 to 18 | One weekend a month, scheduled around activities and work | One 2-week or 4-week block | Same as 6 to 9 |
For a very young child the form reverses the direction of travel. Under age three, the distant parent’s time is in the child’s locale, with the other parent nearby, and the recommended pattern is a visit every two months of up to eight hours a day for up to five days in a row. The child does not fly. The parent does.
The form also sets a date. Under its summer notice option, the distant parent tells the other parent in writing before May 1 which summer dates they have chosen, and if they do not, the other parent chooses for them. The summer block ends at least seven days before the first day of school. Dates like that one are where long-distance plans succeed or fail.
“Calendar specificity matters more than most parents realize. Parenting plans that reference school calendars (such as “six weeks after school ends”) create disputes when school end dates shift or when the parents disagree about what “school ends” means for a child attending summer school or tutoring.”
Florida’s form answers the same problem in a different way. It has a school calendar clause: on or before a date the parents fill in, they obtain the next school year’s calendar and go through it against the schedule so that any differences are resolved before the year starts. It also defines every academic break the same way, beginning at the end of the last scheduled day of classes before the break and ending on the first day of regularly scheduled classes after it, so that “winter break” means the same thing to both parents.
What does the plan say about travel and exchanges?
Everything, if it is a good one. Section VIII of Florida’s form is titled Transportation and Exchange of Child(ren), and it is the longest part of the form because travel is where a long-distance plan breaks.
The section starts with the exchange itself. The parties have the child ready on time, with sufficient clothing packed, and all necessary information and medicines go with the child. Travel information is exchanged and travel plans finalized a set number of days before the date of travel, and except in an emergency, a party who asks to change the plans after that date is solely responsible for any additional cost.
For air travel the form defers to the airlines on the age at which a child may fly unescorted, and then has the parents choose: until a set age the child takes a direct flight or flies accompanied by a named adult, from a later age the child may fly accompanied by an airline employee, and from a later age still the child may fly alone. Reservations are to be made well in advance and preferably non-stop. All flight information goes to the other party a set number of days before the flight. If the exchange is at the airport, the party flying in to collect or deliver the child must notify the other party of any flight delay. And unless agreed otherwise, the party taking the child to the airport calls the other party immediately on departure, and the party who meets the child calls immediately on arrival.
Cost gets its own clauses. One option has the parties purchase the most convenient and least expensive tickets, names who buys them and by what date, requires that everyone entitled to time with the child be notified of the purchase by a date, and has proof of purchase and a copy of the itinerary provided to the other parties. Any cost caused by a missed connection is the sole responsibility of the party who failed to deliver the child to it on time. Other options split the cost by percentage, pay for an adult to accompany the child, or set a number of days within which the non-purchasing parent reimburses the other after receiving documentation of the cost.
The form then covers travel during a parent’s own time. A parent may travel within the United States with the child during their time-sharing, giving the other parent a set number of days’ written notice before leaving the state and a detailed itinerary, with locations and telephone numbers where the child can be reached, a set number of days in advance. Travel out of the country requires the same itinerary and each party’s agreement to provide whatever documentation the other needs to take the child abroad.
None of these clauses is exotic. They are the ordinary content of a long-distance plan, and the reason they are ordinary is that every one of them has been the subject of a dispute somewhere. A plan that says who calls whom when the flight lands is a plan that was written by people who had seen what happens when nobody does.
How does the plan handle contact between visits?
By writing down when it happens, and by saying that the parent the child is with does not get in the way.
Section XI of the Florida form deals with contact between the parties and the child. It says the parties keep contact information current, and that telephone or other electronic contact between the child and the other party “shall not be monitored by or interrupted by the other party.” It defines electronic contact broadly, telephones, e-mail, webcams, video-conferencing equipment and software, and other wired or wireless means, as something that supplements face to face contact rather than replacing it. The parents then choose a pattern: any time, every day within set hours, or on named days within set hours. A separate clause says who pays the cost.
The Illinois page makes the point that matters in practice: general language about “regular” or “reasonable” virtual contact is unenforceable when the parents disagree about what reasonable means, and a schedule that specifies days, time windows and duration is what a court can enforce. The same page notes that under Illinois law virtual contact supplements physical parenting time rather than replacing it, and that plans relying too heavily on it face rejection by the court. Our guide to virtual visitation covers the call schedule itself, what a court can order about it, and how to keep a record of calls that happened and calls that did not.
What does your own record show under a long-distance plan?
That you did what the plan says, on the dates the plan says.
Read back through the two forms and count the dates. The day by which the school calendar is obtained. May 1, for the summer notice. The number of days before travel by which plans are finalized. The number of days before a flight by which the details are sent. The call on departure. The call on arrival. The days and hours of the scheduled calls. The number of days’ notice before an out-of-state trip. The number of days within which a travel cost is reimbursed. A long-distance plan is a calendar with obligations attached, and most of the obligations fall on one parent at a time.
The record that serves you is a record of your side of that calendar. The date you sent the flight details, and what they said. When you called from the airport, and at what time. The visit that went ahead, with the dates. The scheduled call that happened on Tuesday at seven, and the one on Thursday that you placed and that was not answered. Which summer dates you chose and when you sent them. The itinerary you gave before the trip to your parents’ house. None of this is a record of the other parent. It is a record of your own days under the plan, written as they happened.
The Illinois attorneys describe what that record needs to contain when travel breaks down: what should have occurred under the parenting plan, what actually happened, the attempts made to reach the other parent, and the cost incurred. They add that without that documentation, enforcement in court becomes difficult. The same four items are what a parent needs when they are the one being accused of not following the plan, because the answer to “you never called” is a list of the calls, with times.
Distance makes this record more valuable than it is for parents across town, for a simple reason: nobody else saw. Parents who exchange a child in a school car park have teachers and other parents who might remember. Parents who exchange a child at an airport gate two states away have each other, and the airline. The parent with a contemporaneous account of the exchange, the calls and the dates is the parent who can say what happened without asking anyone to take their word for it. Our guide to keeping a contemporaneous record of parenting time explains why a court treats an entry written on the day differently from an account assembled after a dispute begins.
Documented keeps a dated, sealed record of your own days with a child as they happen: the visit that went ahead, the call you made at the scheduled time, the flight details you sent and when. Under a plan measured in dates and distance, the record of your side of it is already written down and ready to hand to your attorney. Learn how it works →
Frequently asked questions
What is a long-distance parenting plan?
A parenting plan for parents who live too far apart for the child to move between homes during the school week. It sets out everything a standard plan does, then adds a schedule built from school breaks and summer blocks, the arrangements for how the child travels and who pays, and the times the child is in contact with the parent they are away from. Florida publishes it as Supreme Court Approved Family Law Form 12.995(c), and Oregon as the Medium/Long Distance Parenting Plan with a long-distance schedule attachment.
How far apart do parents have to live before a plan is long distance?
There is no single national figure. Florida’s form is for a parent planning to move more than 50 miles from the residence at the time of the last order. Oregon suggests its long-distance schedule for parents who live 180 miles or more apart. Many parenting plans set their own distance, and where they do, that number governs. The practical test is whether a weekly exchange is still possible without the child spending the school week in transit.
Can I file for custody in a different state from the other parent?
Usually only in the child’s home state, which under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act is the state where the child lived with a parent for the six consecutive months before the case was filed. If a court has already made a custody order, that court keeps exclusive, continuing jurisdiction while the child or a parent still lives in that state, and a request to change the order goes back to it. There are exceptions, including for emergencies, and this is a question for an attorney in the state concerned. This page is general information, not legal advice.
What is a typical long-distance custody schedule?
For a school-age child, one weekend a month with the distant parent during the school year, an extended summer block, and alternating school breaks and holiday weekends. Oregon’s model gives three to six weeks of summer at ages six to nine and four to eight weeks at ages nine to sixteen, in one block or two. Illinois practitioners describe six to eight consecutive weeks as common. For a child under three, the distant parent usually travels to the child rather than the other way round.
Who pays for travel under a long-distance parenting plan?
Whatever the plan says, and a good plan says it in detail. Florida’s form offers the options of one parent buying the tickets after consultation, a percentage split, payment for an adult to accompany the child, and reimbursement within a set number of days of receiving documentation. It also makes the cost of a missed connection the responsibility of the party who failed to deliver the child on time, and any extra cost from a late change of plans the responsibility of the party who changed them.
References
Primary sources are linked directly. Law firm pages are cited for the quoted passages only.
- Florida Courts: Supreme Court Approved Family Law Form 12.995(c), Relocation/Long Distance Parenting Plan (02/18)
- Oregon Judicial Department: Attachment 4B, Long Distance Schedule, to the Medium/Long Distance Parenting Plan
- California Family Code § 3402, definitions, including “home state”
- California Family Code § 3421, initial child custody jurisdiction
- California Family Code § 3422, exclusive, continuing jurisdiction
- Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute: Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA)
- Anderson Boback & Marshall, by Jessica Marshall: Long-Distance Parenting Schedules and Virtual Visitation in Illinois
- Law & Mediation Office of Sarah Turner: Top 5 Factors to Consider When Drafting a Long-Distance Parenting Plan
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Documented is a private, tamper-evident record of how you show up for your kids. This article is general information, not legal advice, and Documented is not a law firm.