Same state, different state divorce? Kids involved.?

Question

A family member is wanting to divorce her husband, but hasn't told him yet. There are 2 children involved. They live in Alabama, but she wants to move back to Mississippi with the kids. She has no family in Alabama and needs her parents' help (who live in MS) to get on her feet. find a place to live, etc. She's tried for years to make things work, but it just seems to get worse.

Should she separate, move to MS, then file after she's met residency requirements? Would it look bad on her for doing so? She's got no one to help her if she tries to live on her own in AL (I'm in another state from her and the in-laws aren't people she wants to get help from). She's scared that if she stays around for the divorce to finalize, he and his family will make her life miserable. Another thing, any idea what the standard visitation is if the parents live 4-8 hours from each other?

Answer 1

Start looking for a job in MS, when she finds a job, move and put the kids in school and then wait 6 months and then file for divorce because she is going to have to deal with jurisdiction issues with the kids and hope that the husband doesn't file first.  This is really hard.  If she has family in MS, she needs to move with family for awhile and until she can get on her feet.  They are ways to get divorced without getting a lawyer and there are ways to get a divorce without even paying a dime. When she goes to the courthouse look for Law Facilitators and they will help you free of charge.

Answer 2

I worked for very tough and ruthless family lawyers. I did not always agree with how things went down, but based on my experience, here is what I would do. A note: it's unfortunate that it is not the beginning of the summer and she could not take an extended vacation with the children in the beginning of summer and have an attorney start filing in Alabama while she was in Mississippi.

If school has started for the year, I'd actually suggest she file now and hopefully the divorce will be final at the end of the school year and she can move with the kids after that.

Here are some steps she can take:

Irie 1978 is right. If you don't file anything then there is no parental abduction if you take the kids and go to MS. You are simply taking them to spend time with family. There would not be any court orders or filings for custody or agreements.

Now the husband could file for divorce and custody from AL at that time, but he may spend some time trying to work it out first and in that time the clock could run for the MS residency requirement.

I guess there's no set direction here, but tell her to take heart.

I know a case where the mother did get primary residential custody, which was fine with the father because mother telecommuted from home to a tech job and thus would be home more for the kids. He moved to an apartment in walking/biking distance from the family home and made plenty of money to support the wife and children staying in the home.

He in fact gave up a lot of assets to the mother in order to get more visitation with the children and she assured him that he could have very liberal visitation. He was content because the children would stay in the same house and same school, same dance class, everything and he would be just down the road and spend lots of time with them. He himself lived rather simply having been tapped out giving up the assets for this great arrangement and for child support to "keep the daughters in the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed" which was pretty upscale.

Didn't matter. He got to see the kids.

Their mother was lying. In private she said that as soon as the ink was dry on the divorce papers she was moving to her old hometown 500 miles away.  Tapped out he was unable to pay for a high rolling lawyer to help him and the lawyer he had said it didn't matter, that he'd do whatever he was paid to do, but essentially there was nothing he could do about her perjury.

So, she had all the money, she had the kids, and she got to move away after basically committing fraud to get all the assets, which the father had worked hard at a great tech job to acquire.

In addition to being a liar, the mother also had physically assaulted the father, had been emotionally abusive to the girls, and put no limit on their eating such that despite being in dance classes 3-4 times a week, the youngest daughter was at least 50 pounds overweight and the older daughter was obese and already having problems with her knees.

The point is, your friend would have to be a drug addict, prostitute, or murderer to not get primary custody and once she has that, she can live wherever she wants.