WHO PAYS FOR TRANSPORTATION WHEN THE CHILD MOVES ACROSS COUNTRY?©

BY JAMES D. SCOTT, CERTIFIED FAMILY LAW SPECIALIST

COPYRIGHT 2007

When the parent with the most child sharing time moves across the
country, extra efforts must be made for the child or the children to
keep frequent and continuing contact with the parent and other family
members who remain behind.


A move-away by the custodial parent  diminishes the percentage  of calendar time spent
by the child with the parent who remains behind.  This has the
double whammy or triple whammy of causing an increase in the child support payment when
the parent left behind has been ordered to pay support.  A second
unfortunate effect of the move-away is the negative hit to the amount
of time that the child is able to spend with the parent left
behind.  The frequency of those periods of access to the child
diminishes and the stability of the parent/child relationship is
jeopardized.  The third negative impact of a move-away is the cost
of transportation.  When the parent moves two thousand or three
thousand miles from the west coast to the mid west or from the west
coast to the east coast, round trip tickets to fly frequently cost
hundreds of dollars for each visit.  If the children are grade
school age or younger, the parents may reasonably resist allowing them
to fly alone and thus, the cost of a round trip ticket is doubled or
tripled for the escort.  Even when the move is regional and a two
hundred mile to four hundred mile distance with a lack of airport
access may make driving more practical, the cost of gasoline and the
use of an automobile are significant deterrents to visitation.


THE GUIDELINE

In 1992 the infamous Guideline of the California Family Code became
effective.  It mandated adherence by the courts.   In
the early years following the implementation of the Guideline, the
courts tended to follow the mathematical formula almost with a lockstep
procedure.  As a point though, relief for transportation costs may
be found in California Family Code §4057(b)(5), which says,


Application of the formula would be unjust or inappropriate due to
special circumstances in the particular case.  These special
circumstances include, but are not limited to the following:�


The special circumstances listed do not include sharing the costs of
transportation in a move-away case, but appellate courts have
recognized that code section as providing just this kind of relief.


In the appellate case of Wilson v. Shea (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 887 the
trial court was found to have discretion to reduce Guideline support to
allow the creation of a travel fund to be managed by the paying
parent.  To do this, the trial court had to compute the regular
Guideline amount first, take evidence of the cost of the
transportation, and then note the special circumstance.


In Wilson the court found that given the importance of contact to the
child with the parent left behind, and the practical necessity of a
travel fund when a case presents the special circumstance of
out-of-state visitation, the promotion of frequent and continuing
contact with both parents after the parents have separated is certainly
a factor that may mean the rote application of the Guideline formula is
unjust or inappropriate in some cases.


This has nothing to do with another sort of case where the parent
moving away has some kind of malicious intention to disrupt the
relationship of the child with the parent left behind.


This is not to say that one hundred percent of the travel cost should
be paid from the child support that would otherwise be ordered. 
It simply gives guidance to parents in an unfortunate move-away
situation that they should try to be creative and reasonable and
flexible with each other while using the child support as a resource to
help cover the costs of transportation.  In a case with a shorter
distance, it could mean that each parent would travel halfway to hand
off the child to the other parent.


When faced with a move-away decision, both parents would be encouraged
to use reasonableness and to look at the unfortunate situation from the
eyes of the child who will certainly want to maintain the stability of
the relationship that the child has enjoyed with the parent left behind
and with the other members of the family left behind.