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BY JAMES D. SCOTT, CERTIFIED FAMILY LAW SPECIALIST

COPYRIGHT 2007

When the parent with the most child sharing time moves across the

country, extra efforts must be made for the child or the children to

keep frequent and continuing contact with the parent and other family

members who remain behind.


A move-away by the custodial parent  diminishes the percentage  of calendar time spent

by the child with the parent who remains behind.  This has the

double whammy or triple whammy of causing an increase in the child support payment when

the parent left behind has been ordered to pay support.  A second

unfortunate effect of the move-away is the negative hit to the amount

of time that the child is able to spend with the parent left

behind.  The frequency of those periods of access to the child

diminishes and the stability of the parent/child relationship is

jeopardized.  The third negative impact of a move-away is the cost

of transportation.  When the parent moves two thousand or three

thousand miles from the west coast to the mid west or from the west

coast to the east coast, round trip tickets to fly frequently cost

hundreds of dollars for each visit.  If the children are grade

school age or younger, the parents may reasonably resist allowing them

to fly alone and thus, the cost of a round trip ticket is doubled or

tripled for the escort.  Even when the move is regional and a two

hundred mile to four hundred mile distance with a lack of airport

access may make driving more practical, the cost of gasoline and the

use of an automobile are significant deterrents to visitation.

THE GUIDELINE

 

In 1992 the infamous Guideline of the California Family Code became

effective.  It mandated adherence by the courts.   In

the early years following the implementation of the Guideline, the

courts tended to follow the mathematical formula almost with a lockstep

procedure.  As a point though, relief for transportation costs may

be found in California Family Code §4057(b)(5), which says,

“Application of the formula would be unjust or inappropriate due to

special circumstances in the particular case.  These special

circumstances include, but are not limited to the following:”

The special circumstances listed do not include sharing the costs of

transportation in a move-away case, but appellate courts have

recognized that code section as providing just this kind of relief.

In the appellate case of Wilson v. Shea (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 887 the

trial court was found to have discretion to reduce Guideline support to

allow the creation of a travel fund to be managed by the paying

parent.  To do this, the trial court had to compute the regular

Guideline amount first, take evidence of the cost of the

transportation, and then note the special circumstance.

In Wilson the court found that given the importance of contact to the

child with the parent left behind, and the practical necessity of a

travel fund when a case presents the special circumstance of

out-of-state visitation, the promotion of frequent and continuing

contact with both parents after the parents have separated is certainly

a factor that may mean the rote application of the Guideline formula is

unjust or inappropriate in some cases.

This has nothing to do with another sort of case where the parent

moving away has some kind of malicious intention to disrupt the

relationship of the child with the parent left behind.

This is not to say that one hundred percent of the travel cost should

be paid from the child support that would otherwise be ordered.

It simply gives guidance to parents in an unfortunate move-away

situation that they should try to be creative and reasonable and

flexible with each other while using the child support as a resource to

help cover the costs of transportation.  In a case with a shorter

distance, it could mean that each parent would travel halfway to hand

off the child to the other parent.

When faced with a move-away decision, both parents would be encouraged

to use reasonableness and to look at the unfortunate situation from the

eyes of the child who will certainly want to maintain the stability of

the relationship that the child has enjoyed with the parent left behind

and with the other members of the family left behind.

Auther profile:

The law firm of Certified

Specialist of Family Law


and practices Divorce and Family Law in San Diego, CA.http://www.scottfamilylaw.net/  

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