Moving out of state with joint custody: consent, the court’s permission, and what your own record shows

Written by our research team · Published September 20, 2026This is general information, not legal advice.

Can you move out of state with joint custody?

Not on your own. When both parents hold custody and a court order or parenting plan sets the schedule, moving the child out of state changes that order, and a parent cannot change an order by acting on it. The move happens one of two ways: the other parent consents in writing and the court enters the new arrangement, or the moving parent asks the court and the court says yes.

That is the rule in every state, in different words. California puts it as a presumption with a limit. Section 7501 of the Family Code says a parent entitled to custody of a child “has a right to change the residence of the child, subject to the power of the court to restrain a removal that would prejudice the rights or welfare of the child.” The same section says the Legislature intends to affirm the California Supreme Court’s decision in In re Marriage of Burgess and declare it the public policy of the state. The right is real, and so is the limit.

How the limit works depends on the custody arrangement, and this is where joint custody is different from sole custody. The California courts’ own self-help page puts it plainly. Where there is a permanent custody order, a judge will typically allow a parent with sole physical custody to move away with the child unless the other parent can show the move would harm the child. A judge will typically not allow a parent with joint physical custody to move away with the child unless that parent can show the move is in the child’s best interest. Same court, same child, opposite starting point. With joint custody, the parent who wants to move is the parent who has to make the case.

Two people read this page. One of them has a job offer, a partner, a family or a rent they can afford in another state, and wants to know what the process is. The other has just been told, or suspects, that the child’s other parent is planning a move, and wants to know what they can do. The process is the same for both, and so is the thing the court will ask each of them: what has your involvement in this child’s life actually been.

What counts as a relocation?

Before any of this applies, the move has to be a relocation in the legal sense, and states define that differently.

Florida defines it by distance and duration. Section 61.13001 of the Florida Statutes says a relocation is a change in the location of a parent’s principal residence from where it was at the time of the last order, and the change “must be at least 50 miles from that residence, and for at least 60 consecutive days.” A temporary absence for a vacation, for education, or for the child’s health care does not count. A move across town is not a relocation under that statute. A move of 50 miles within Florida is.

California has no mileage figure in its statute. What it has instead is section 3024, which lets a court, when it makes a custody order, require that a parent “notify the other parent if the parent plans to change the residence of the child for more than 30 days, unless there is prior written agreement to the removal.” The notice goes by mail, return receipt requested, to the other parent and to their attorney of record, and “to the extent feasible” at least 45 days before the move, “so as to allow time for mediation of a new agreement concerning custody.” Whether that clause is in your order depends on the order. Many California orders carry it.

So the first document to read is not a statute. It is your own custody order or parenting plan. It may already say how far either parent can move without the other’s agreement, how much notice is required, and in what form. If it does, those terms govern, and the court will expect you to have followed them. Our guide to the reasons a judge will deny relocation covers the notice step and the objection in detail. This guide is about the request itself.

What happens if the other parent agrees?

Then the move can go ahead by agreement, and the agreement has a shape.

Florida’s statute describes it. If the parents and everyone else with time-sharing rights agree to the relocation, they can satisfy the statute by signing a written agreement that reflects consent to the move, defines the access or time-sharing schedule for the parent who is not moving, and describes any transportation arrangements that schedule needs. Where there is already a court order about the child, the parties file the agreement and ask the court to ratify it, which the court can do without a hearing unless someone asks for one in writing within ten days of filing.

The pattern holds outside Florida. Consent to a relocation is a signed document that answers three questions: do you agree to the move, what does the schedule look like afterwards, and who travels and how. It goes to the court so that the order on file matches what the parents are actually doing. A text message that says “fine, go” answers the first question only, and it is not on file anywhere.

For the parent being asked to consent, the same document is the place to think carefully about what the schedule will be. The California courts’ self-help page suggests thinking about what visitation schedule you would want before agreeing, and, for an out-of-state move, talking to a lawyer with experience of parents who live in different states, because the agreement can set which state’s court has the power to change the orders afterwards. Once the child has moved, that question gets harder to reopen.

What goes in a petition to relocate?

If there is no agreement, the parent who wants to move files a petition and serves it on the other parent. Florida’s statute lists what the petition has to contain, and the list is a useful picture of what a court in any state wants to know.

Under section 61.13001(3), the petition is signed under oath and includes the location of the intended new residence, with the state, city and physical address if known; the mailing address and home telephone number if known; the date of the intended move; “a detailed statement of the specific reasons for the proposed relocation,” with the written job offer attached if a job is one of the reasons; and a proposal for the revised schedule of access and time-sharing after the move, together with the transportation arrangements needed to make it work. The statute then says that, absent an existing order restricting the other parent’s time or other good cause, “failure to comply with this provision renders the petition to relocate legally insufficient.”

That last sentence deserves attention. The petition is not a request to leave. It is a proposal for how the child will keep both parents after the move, with the reasons attached. A petition that says why the moving parent needs to go and nothing about the other parent’s time is, in Florida, not a petition at all.

The petition also has to carry a warning, in capital letters, that a response objecting to the relocation must be filed and served within 20 days of service, and that without a timely objection “the relocation will be allowed, unless it is not in the best interests of the child, without further notice and without a hearing.” If no objection comes, the court presumes the move is in the child’s best interest and, absent good cause, enters an order adopting the schedule and transport arrangements in the petition. If an objection is filed, the moving parent may not relocate, and the case goes to a temporary hearing or trial.

Other states structure the filing differently, and some call it a notice of intent to relocate or a motion rather than a petition. The contents converge: where, when, why, and what the schedule will be afterwards.

What does the moving parent have to show?

That the move is in the child’s best interest, and in most states the moving parent goes first.

Florida says so directly. Section 61.13001(8) puts the burden on the parent wishing to relocate to prove “by a preponderance of the evidence that relocation is in the best interest of the child.” If that burden is met, it shifts to the other parent to show, by the same standard, that the move is not. The statute also says, in subsection (7), that where the move would materially affect the current schedule of contact, no presumption arises for or against the request. The court starts at zero and evaluates the factors.

Those factors are the substance of a relocation case, and Florida’s list is representative. The court evaluates:

• the nature, quality, extent and duration of the child’s relationship with each parent and with siblings and other significant people in the child’s life;
• the child’s age, developmental stage and needs, and the likely effect of the move on the child’s physical, educational and emotional development;
• whether the relationship with the parent who stays can be preserved through substitute arrangements, taking the logistics and the parties’ finances into account, and how likely the moving parent is to comply with those arrangements once outside the court’s jurisdiction;
• the child’s preference, weighed by age and maturity;
• whether the move will improve the general quality of life for the moving parent and the child, financially, emotionally or educationally;
• each parent’s reasons for seeking or opposing the move;
• each parent’s employment and economic circumstances, and whether the move is necessary to improve them;
• whether the request is made in good faith, and whether the objecting parent has met their own financial obligations, including child support;
• the career and other opportunities available to the objecting parent if the move happens;
• any history of substance abuse or domestic violence by either parent;
• anything else affecting the child’s best interest.

California reaches a similar place by a different route. Because section 7501 gives a custodial parent a presumptive right to move, the objecting parent carries the burden where one parent has sole physical custody. Where physical custody is genuinely joint, the courts’ self-help page says the moving parent has to show the move serves the child’s best interest. Which side of that line a family sits on depends less on the label in the order than on how the time has actually been divided, and that is a question of fact the court answers from the evidence.

What does your own record show in a relocation case?

Read the factor list again and notice how much of it is a description of ordinary days. The first factor is each parent’s relationship with the child: its nature, its quality, its extent, its duration. The third is whether the relationship with the parent who stays can survive the distance, which depends on what that relationship consists of now. Florida’s statute makes this explicit on the objecting side: under subsection (5), an answer objecting to a relocation must be verified and must include “a statement of the amount of participation or involvement the objecting party currently has or has had in the life of the child.”

That sentence tells both parents what the case is made of. The parent who wants to move is asking the court to believe that the child’s life with them is the child’s main life, and that it will be a good one in the new place. The parent who objects is asking the court to believe that their own involvement is substantial enough that the distance would cost the child something real. Neither of those is a claim about the other parent. Both are claims about the parent making them, and both are only as strong as the record behind them.

For the parent who wants to move, the record is the child’s life as you have kept it: the days the child was with you, the school mornings, the appointments you took the child to, the activities, the exchanges that happened on schedule and the dates of each. Alongside it sits the record of the move itself: the date of the job offer and its terms, the date you gave notice to the other parent and the form it took, the drafts of a proposed schedule you sent and when, the mediation dates. The petition asks for specific reasons and a specific proposal. A record kept as it happened supplies both.

For the parent who would stay, the record is the same thing from your side: the overnights you had, the school runs, the practices, the pickups, the calls, the appointments, the exchanges that happened, each with its date. Florida asks you to state your participation in the child’s life under oath. The most credible answer to that question is the one you wrote down before there was any move to object to, one day at a time.

Neither record is a record of the other parent. It does not need to be. Every factor the court weighs asks what each parent has done and what each parent proposes, and the parent with a contemporaneous account of their own days is the parent who can answer. Our guide to keeping a contemporaneous record explains why courts treat entries written on the day differently from an account written once a dispute exists.

How do you propose a long-distance schedule?

By answering the questions the statute says the petition has to answer, in enough detail that the other parent and the court can picture a year.

A proposal that survives contact with a court says which blocks of time the child spends with the parent who stays: school holidays, the summer, long weekends, and how the school calendar in the new state is handled. It says how the child travels, at what age the child travels alone if at all, who accompanies the child and who pays. It says what happens in between: scheduled calls and video calls, at what times, and how the parents will handle a missed one. It says which parent holds the child’s passport and documents, and how school and medical information reaches the parent who is not there. Our guide to virtual visitation covers the calls in detail, and our guide to changing a parenting plan covers how a modified schedule gets entered.

The proposal is also evidence. The Florida factor list asks the court to consider how likely the moving parent is to comply with the substitute arrangements once out of the court’s reach. A proposal that is specific about transport and cost, made by a parent whose record shows exchanges that happened on time for the last two years, answers that question. A proposal that says the parents will “work it out” does not.

Frequently asked questions

References

Primary sources are linked directly. Law firm pages are cited for the quoted passages only.

• California Family Code § 7501, Right of a parent entitled to custody to change the residence of the child
• California Family Code § 3024, Notice of a change in the child’s residence
• California Courts Self-Help Guide: Relocating (moving away) with your child
• Florida Statutes § 61.13001, Parental relocation with a child
• West Coast Divorce, by Jason P. Hopper: Child Custody and Relocation: The 2026 California Parents’ Guide to Moving with Shared Custody
• McCoy Family Law: Can You Move Out of State If You Share Custody in Colorado?

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