The divorce is over. You have a custody order. Maybe you even have joint custody and a significant amount of time with your child or children. Months or years go by. Then your ex drops the bomb. She’s moving. She sends you a letter telling — not asking, telling — you that she and the kids are moving. It could be a move within your state or one that will take your kids across the country, but either way, there is no way you are going to be able to be with your children as you were before.

This is a familiar scene and one that motivates an increasing percentage of custody litigation in family courts around the United States.

In Maryland, our statute skirts around the issue, giving the court the option to include, in an original custody order, the requirement that the parent who has primary residential custody of the children, “provide advance, written notice of at least 45 days to the court, the other party, or both, of the intent to relocate the permanent residence of the party or the child either within or outside the State.” Md. Code Ann., Fam. Law Art. sec. 9-106(a) (as amended). We also have case law that supports the presumption that a move outside the state is a sufficiently serious change in circumstances to support a change in custody . . . sometimes . . . it depends.

On the other end of the spectrum are states that have mandatory relocation provisions written into their state statutes. For example, my colleagues in Michigan have described a statute there that they say requires either advance written agreement between parents or a court order before a parent can move more than 100 miles away. I can imagine all kinds of trouble with that kind of requirement as well.

Any time you look at a legal problem you have to look at both sides of the coin. What if you have residential custody and you need to move? What if you lose your job, or you have a family crisis that demands a move? Should the law force you to choose between economic survival and staying in your child’s life?

These questions, and others closely related to them, are problems the courts have to grapple with every day. They highlight the need for focused, child-centered, legislation crafted to protect the interests of children in an engaged and meaningful relationship with both parents. Rethinking our statutory mandate on child relocation would also give our judges the tool they need to ensure those relationships are protected.