Dealing With Your Ex Partner and Child Moving Away

We all know that lives change. In a society that’s become more and more mobile, moving homes, moving cities and even countries, has become fairly commonplace. But if your kids live with your former partner and she has to move away, how do you deal with that? The move could be work related, or perhaps because her new partner has a job somewhere else, at the other end of the country. What are the ramifications?

Within The U.K.

An awful lot is going to depend on the type of relationship you have with you ex. If it’s good, then when she moves you’ll be able to re-negotiate contact with your children. It might be that you don’t see them as often, but when you do it’s for a longer period.

If they’ve been spending a few nights a week with you, it can be especially bad, since you won’t have their presence regularly, which you’re used to. But your ex isn’t legally obliged to live near you.

If the relationship is bad, you might need to apply for a change in your contact order, which can be a gruelling procedure, not to mention expensive, since you’ll want to have a solicitor to represent you, although you may be able to come to an agreement through mediation. You will still be expected to pay child support as before.

Emotional Impact

Perhaps the biggest factor to deal with is the emotional impact. You should arrange plenty of phone contact with your children, daily if at all possible, so they still feel that you’re involved in their lives (and so you feel that way, too) and try to see them as often as possible. If you can arrange a trip to see them once a month, that’s good, but not economically viable for many people.

School holidays would be the best time to see them, when you might be able to have them for a week – or even several weeks in the summer, if you can negotiate this. Of course, wonderful as it sounds, the practicalities can be real obstacles; after all, you still have to work, and there’s only so much holiday time you can take each year. You need to try and find a balance that works for you.

Going Abroad

But what happens if your ex wants to move abroad with your kids? She might be a foreign national, for example, and want to move home, or she might have married someone from another country and be moving. What can you do in the situation where your kids are taken even farther away from you?

Essentially, you have two choices. You can either accept the fact and come to some agreement about when the children can spend time with you. In real terms that means over school holidays, especially the summer, although that can pose logistical problems in terms of work (however, many employers will be understanding), but it is feasible, especially with increased contact via phone and the Internet.

If you follow this route and come to an agreement, have it in writing and legally validated. It should include the number of visits per year and their length. Also, make sure to include who is responsible for airfares, which can avoid tumultuous arguments later. If you’re paying child support, you should try and have a provision saying you don’t have to pay for the period the kids are living with you.

Alternatively, you can fight the move in court and try to have yours as their primary residence – in other words, gain custody of your kids. This is only going to work is you have parental responsibility for the children (that is, if you’re named as the father on the birth certificate or have a parental responsibility agreement); if not, it’s not worth the effort, because you won’t win.

Rather than the distress this will cause you, what you’ll need to show is how it will adversely affect the kids. If the proposed move is to a non English-speaking country, for example, and your kids are in school and have grown up speaking English, you’ll want to cite that – especially if the kids are in their early teens. You’ll need to develop a valid argument, preferably several, and be well represented in court.

If your ex does move the kids overseas, you’ll feel the loss even more than if they’re just elsewhere in the U.K. Use as many different methods of contact as you can to keep in touch with them, daily if possible. It’s not an ideal substitute, but it really is better than nothing at all.