Before You Move — Read This Part of Your Parenting Plan
Mar 26, 2026Before you pack a single box, you need to read your relocation clause.
Let me tell you what nobody tells you when you're sitting in that mediator's office, sleep deprived, emotionally destroyed, and just trying to get through it: you might be signing away your right to move. Not across the country. Across town. Into a cheaper place. Into a better school district. Into a house with someone who actually loves you. Your parenting plan can block all of it and nobody is going to stop you and say hey, read this part more carefully.
You're going to find out when you're already packed.
I've seen it happen over and over. A parent wants to move. Reasonable request. Normal life stuff. And then they actually read their parenting plan and realize they need their ex's permission. And if you've spent five minutes co-parenting with a high-conflict person you already know that permission is never coming. It doesn't matter how reasonable the request is. It doesn't matter if you're moving two miles away. The answer is no. It's always no. So congratulations, your ex now controls your zip code.
That's what a badly written relocation clause does. And most of them are badly written.
In this episode I get into all of it. Why picking one parent's house as the center point of a relocation radius is not a logistics decision, it's a control decision. Why I'd use a post office or a fixed landmark instead, something neutral that doesn't hand either parent a quiet advantage. How to pick a distance that actually holds up in real life, not in the best case scenario version of co-parenting where everyone is reasonable and nothing is hard. Because that version doesn't exist and you need to stop planning for it.
I also want to talk about the parents who swear up and down they are never moving. I hear you. And I've also watched rent double. I've watched relationships end and new ones start. I've watched parents get the call that their mom or dad is sick and they need to go home. I've watched people realize that the city their marriage fell apart in is not the city they want to raise their kids in. Life does not stay still just because your parenting plan does.
You are not always going to be in this spot. You are not always going to be broke. You are not always going to be alone. You are not always going to be in survival mode. You're going to want to move eventually. And when that day comes, you need a parenting plan that lets you.
Build it right now while you still can. Because fixing it later is going to cost you.
Here’s What You Can Actually Take Away:
- I'm not staying in this spot forever — My parenting plan needs to be built for the life I'm going to live, not just the one I'm surviving right now.
- Neutral center point only — I'd pick a post office or a landmark, never one parent's house, because the center point sets the power dynamic for everything else.
- Define the radius clearly — Both parents should be able to move freely within the agreed distance as many times as they want without asking for permission.
- Base the distance on real life — Late nights, school pickups, basketball practice. The distance only works if it works on the hard days.
- Airtight language protects me — With a high-conflict ex, every vague sentence in my parenting plan is an opening for a fight.
- Relocation during the divorce, not after — Building flexibility in upfront is a fraction of the cost and stress of fighting for it later.
The Truth Bombs
- "I don't want to be landlocked because of my parenting plan. And a lot of yours are landlocking you and you don't even know it until you try to move."
- "I would never pick one parent's house as the starting center point of that radius. I want no part of that."
- "Picture your kid at 9pm after a game, starving, still has homework, hasn't showered. How far do you want that drive home to be? That's your number."
- "You won't be in the same spot forever. I know that feels unrealistic right now. But you are going to move on to bigger, greater, better things. Your parenting plan better know that."
- "The relocation section of your parenting plan is not just about moving across the country. It is about every single address change you ever want to make."
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Samantha Boss: Again, we're talking about clauses inside of parenting plans that can cause havoc on you if they're not written well. And today we're gonna cover the relocation, which I would say probably doesn't affect a lot of my listeners. But if it's going to, then pay attention, and you really sometimes don't know that relocation is in the cards for you.
And I think where I've noticed in parenting plans, sometimes the relocation portion of your parenting plan is written so poorly you can't move across town. And we're gonna get into why that is. But first and foremost, relocation, if you're in a joint parenting agreement, is very difficult because you have equal say, 50/50 joint agreement. And so to relocate assumingly far away could be very problematic in your case and it's very hard to do. But this section kind of tells you how you even bring that subject up and how you talk about that.
Again, no legal advice here. These are just things I want you guys to be thinking about. When you are reading your parenting plan, like, does this help me? Does this hurt me? Should this be included? Should this not be included?
And first and foremost, I think a lot of parenting plans don't give parents enough space to move. And here's how I describe it inside of my masterclass for parents — you gotta pick a neutral setting. And I think too many of us think that you pick like mom's house or dad's house, and then the other party can live so far away. But what if mom wants to move? What if mom wants to move in with somebody else? What if mom wants to downsize? It limits mom when we pick her as the primary address.
Pick a Neutral Location — Not Mom's House, Not Dad's House
So I think picking first and foremost a neutral location. A post office, a high school, an ending point for our children. Picking the high school that they're going to attend — that also locks in that high school as well. If you know what I'm doing there, you know, getting a decision made already.
But pick some kind of center location in town. A university, an exact spot. Post offices usually typically don't change. So that's a good one to pick.
But I want you to understand that both parties should be allowed to move a certain range while keeping the same parenting plan. Let me break down what that means because I'm not here to talk above you, I'm here to talk with you. What that means is I should be able to live 15 miles from my post office and we keep the same holiday schedule, visitation schedule, and the kids can be in the same school.
So you have to know a lot of things here. You need to know your school district boundaries. You need to know what school your kid is going to. You need to know how far the limits of town. You also need to know, are you okay with one party staying in the district while one party moves out of the district? Possibly. But what is the distance between you and your ex's home that each party could move around?
You each can move around a certain distance and keep the same agreement. Now I should be able to move — and this is me talking in theory — I should be able to move as many times as I want inside this range, this radius. Is moving a bunch for kids good? I don't know. I'm not a therapist. Probably not. But I don't wanna be landlocked because of my parenting plan. And a lot of your parenting plans are landlocking you and you don't even know it until you try to move.
The Distance That Changes Everything
So how far can we move? How far is that distance where both of us can move inside that district as many times as we want? Because when someone wants to move outside of that limit — that's the limit.
For Midwesterners, 30 minutes is usually 30 miles. Now you East Coast, West Coast people — 30 miles could take you four days. I'm not one of those big trafficked areas, but I want you to understand 30 miles is 30 minutes in some places. So that's what you also have to understand — time and distance for your certain geographic area.
But Midwesterners, let's just say that we agree that we each can move 30 miles and keep the same plan from each other. Because if that works for our school district and it works for our scheduling, 30 minutes is not that big of a deal. It's not that big of a drive. Some of you may say 10 miles, some of you may say 10 minutes. I don't know. I'm not you. It's your custom parenting plan. You build it how you want.
But let's say if we use 30 minutes, 30 miles — then if somebody wants to move 45 minutes away, well, we agreed that that's past 30. 45 is bigger than 30. That could possibly open up the door to change our custody agreement because we said 30 and you wanna move 45 away. So now we might have just put ourselves in a long distance type of situation where custody needs to be evaluated again. 45 minutes is too far because we agreed 30. Anything past 30, we said no. We'll have to change the plan.
So if you wanna move 45, then that means we need to adjust the plan. We could just be adjusting holidays. We could just be adjusting visitation. Or we could be opening Pandora's box and talking about decision making.
And what I want you to avoid in this section is that it has to be agreed upon. Yeah, I understand you're with a high conflict person. If I said, hey ex, I wanna move across town, my ex will be like, no. Even if I said I wanna move into a tent and I'm gonna be homeless, can I? No. Everything I asked would've been a no. So the fact that you have to put it in your parenting plan that you have to go ask permission from your ex to move seems a little shady to me.
Real Reasons People Need to Relocate — And Why You Should Handle It Early
I've seen people need to move because of new marriages, businesses failing. I have a lot of clients in California that can't afford to live there and they need to move. When you go through a divorce, you quickly realize that you're not around your friends and family. This person has iced you out. You're completely alone. You don't have any friends. Your family's across the country and you have nobody and you wanna move home.
My own little spinoff is I would be doing a relocation from the word jump. I wouldn't wanna be getting divorced and then ask for a relocation. I would just do it all in one fell swoop. And you're gonna have an attorney say, oh gross, I don't wanna do that. Right? They don't because it's a lot of work for them to talk that judge into letting you move across the country. But if you have a strong case for it — I've seen everything from the person who works too much and needs help so they're moving to where they can get help. I've seen cost of living be a determination. I've seen ailing parents — the grandparents are deathly sick and one parent needs to move back to take care of them, and they've allowed that relocation.
But let's think about the wording of you being able to move, maybe neighborhoods. Some of the parenting plans that I've seen are really strict and don't allow the parents to move from the primary address that's being used. And that's just asinine to me. What if you can't afford that home anymore? Or you meet the man of your dreams or woman of your dreams and you're like, hey, I wanna move in with you. And your parenting plan forbids that without having to spend money to go change that.
You Are Not Always Going to Be in This Spot — Plan for That
You won't be in the same spot forever. And I know that seems unrealistic, maybe if you're just starting this journey. But you are not always going to be poor. You are not always going to be in this spot of like, everything's a problem. Everything is dramatic, everything is just chaos. You're not always gonna be in this financial setting. You're not always gonna be in this mental state. You're not always gonna be single. You're not always gonna be lonely. You're gonna move on to bigger, greater, better things. And you gotta plan for that in your parenting plan. And a parenting plan that doesn't allow flexibility into you growing as a single parent is asinine to me.
I hear so many parents say I'm never moving out of this district. Okay. Do we know that the district four down is even better than the one you're at? Do you not know that you could meet the ideal soulmate that's four districts down and you do wanna move in with that person? But now you've landlocked your thinking into just this district because it's the best district for your kids. And if you think a high conflict parent's gonna agree on you moving that far away, you're full of it. So you're gonna have to start figuring out how do I bring data to show that this district is better than this district, and how will I still serve the relationship to this other parent when I move the children four districts away.
So I want you to be thinking bigger than right now when you build the relocation section. I would say both of us agree to live within 15 miles of the local post office, which is listed at this address. We agree we can move as many times as we want without asking permission within this 15 mile radius. What I'm not gonna do is say we can move 60 if that means it's gonna be uncomfortable for our kids to keep that same visitation schedule.
And here's the step that a lot of people don't think through. I want you to picture volleyball or basketball practice getting over at 7:30, 8 o'clock at night. Your kid has went to school that morning, stayed after school with their friends to do study hall, went straight into a basketball game and it's 7:30, 8 o'clock. Hell, some of y'all, it's nine o'clock at night and all your kid has had is a snack after school and still hasn't eaten yet. And when you pick that kid up, what's the distance you wanna travel to get home? Because we all know we can do a cheeseburger at McDonald's or a taco at Taco Bell, but that gets old real fast. You're gonna want a home cooked meal.
So how far is that drive from that school to your home that gets your kid home doing homework, showered, fed, and in bed by a decent time? Because that's the real life that you're gonna lead. You're gonna be the taxi that gets your kids home from all these games. And I want you to pick a distance that keeps that kid not in the car for hours on end, just because you want a 50/50 schedule but you also wanna live 60 miles away from each other.
Pick a distance that makes sense for those late nights. Make that make sense for your child, not for you. I know you want a 50/50 schedule. Then your ass better not move that far away. That's what I'm laying out here. You gotta pick the distance that's best for kids and their schedule, not yours.
You're just a taxi. FYI.
