Show Notes
Before 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, b
More from The Ugly Truth of Divorce
The hardest part of co-parenting isn't always what your ex says. Sometimes it's that they say nothing at all. They read it. They sit on it. They answer a completely different question, or they ask you one back while dodging yours entirely. And you freeze. You're not allowed to make a unilateral decision, so you wait. Meanwhile the school needs the form back Thursday, the coach needs an answer by tomorrow, and your kid keeps asking whether they can sign up for floor hockey. Our kids end up paying for another adult's decision to ignore us.
Early in a separation, almost every parent has the same reaction: I don't want my ex taking my kids out of state. That fear is normal. It's also the fear that gets parents to sign restrictions they spend the next decade regretting. This week I'm answering the question directly, and then I'm flipping it. Because every limit you put on your ex lands right back on you.
Your parenting plan was written assuming you'd both stay put. Life doesn't care what you assumed. A dating app match, a cheaper cost of living, a job offer three states away, and suddenly the plan built for two local parents doesn't fit the family it's supposed to protect. This week I'm walking through what actually needs to be in your parenting plan before someone relocates, not after. Start with the distance rule. Most plans use something like 30 miles or 30 minutes. Move inside that line, and the whole plan stays exactly the same: same visitation, same holidays, same everything. Move past it, and the plan should trigger a rebuild, not a scramble. Your plan should also answer whether the parent can move out of state at all, what notice they owe you, whether court approval is required, and whether the move triggers an automatic review. Then comes the real question: is this an adjusted schedule, or a full long-distance parenting plan? If pickups, school drop-off, and weekday dinners aren't realistic anymore, you're building a completely different structure, one built on big chunks of time instead of weekly visits. Spring break, summer, fall break, winter break, these start shifting to the parent who moved, while the local parent keeps school-year stability. I'm also covering the thing most attorneys forget: a long-distance parent should still be able to fly in and watch a game, a recital, a school function, without it eating into their actual parenting time. And holidays need a full rework, because a long-distance parent is going to miss the ones tied to a single day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Halloween, and gain more of the ones tied to a longer break, Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer. We're also getting into who makes the day-to-day decisions now, how child support recalculates when the schedule changes, who pays for travel and what happens when a flight gets canceled, how teenagers change the long-distance equation, what happens when a kid gets sick right before a trip, and what a reasonable communication schedule actually looks like when “we'll figure it out” isn't good enough anymore. The goal isn't to force the old plan to work. It's to build one that matches the life you actually have now.
Summer's coming, and if your parenting plan has a vague vacation clause, the same fights you had last year are already loading. Who asks first. How long you can be gone. Whether your ex gets “makeup time.” Whether you owe them an itinerary down to the restaurant. None of it should be a fight, and all of it becomes one when the plan doesn't spell it out. This week I'm walking through the six vacation fights I see over and over, and the exact clauses that shut each one down before it starts. First, the question nobody asks: does vacation even have to be during summer? I don't think so. Summer-only is predictable, but it's also peak pricing and packed destinations. Year-round vacation language gives you flexibility, cheaper travel, and room for the life you're building, not the one you're surviving right now. Stop living small inside your parenting plan. Ask for the vacation time your future self will want, not what this year's budget says you can use. Then the fights. “I asked first” is not a clause. I'll show you why notice-based language, 30 or 60 days, beats first-come-first-served and April 1st deadlines. How long can you be gone? That's a custom build, because three consecutive weeks is ridiculous to your coworker Stacy and completely necessary if your family lives across an ocean. Can vacation get tacked onto existing parenting time? It can if your plan doesn't say otherwise, and that's how your ex turns seven vacation days into three weekends in a row. Do you owe time back? No. Vacations supersede visitation, and time lost is not regained. Makeup time just gets muddy, and high-conflict people will stack it into a second vacation they never had to call one. And the two information fights: not enough, and too much. I saw a plan recently that required a parent to ask permission and wait 10 days for their ex to approve a vacation. Gross. Your plan should be written so well that you're informing, not asking. Destination, dates, emergency contact, flight info. That's it. And on the flip side, if your ex wants the full itinerary, every restaurant, every activity, daily phone calls? No. Safety information matters. Control does not.
Larry handed you a parenting plan with a list of holidays, a list of breaks, and a line about vacations, and called it finished. He never told you which one wins when two of them land on the same day. And your high-conflict ex found that gap before the ink was even dry. This week I'm breaking down the one paragraph missing from almost every parenting plan on earth: the order of priority. Because a list of holidays, breaks, and vacations with no hierarchy isn't a plan. It's an invitation for a high-conflict parent to clean house and take from you every single time.