Relocation Custody Schedule: How to Build a Workable Long-Distance Plan

A local 2-2-3 or alternating-week schedule depends on short travel. At long distance, repeated school-week exchanges may become impossible. The schedule often shifts toward:

• →One primary school-year home
• →Longer summer blocks with the distant parent
• →Alternating or divided school breaks
• →Carefully allocated major holidays
• →Fewer but longer visits
• →Scheduled phone/video contact
• →Detailed transportation rules

The goal is not to preserve the old percentage at any cost. It is to create a calendar the child can actually live.

There is no reliable universal "chance of winning" a relocation case. The governing test varies by state, and the facts matter. Depending on the jurisdiction, relevant considerations can include:

1. 1

   The reason for the proposed move (job, family support, remarriage, cost of living, safety)

2. 2

   The relationship and involvement of the parent who is not moving

3. 3

   Whether a workable long-distance parenting plan can preserve a meaningful relationship with the non-relocating parent

4. 4

   The child's ties to school, community and extended family in both locations

5. 5

   Each parent's history of complying with the existing custody order

6. 6

   The child's own preference, depending on age and the applicable state law

Those are general themes, not a nationwide legal test. Some states prescribe specific statutory factors, notice procedures or burdens of proof. The existing custody order can also matter. A useful relocation proposal therefore does two things separately: it addresses the jurisdiction's legal requirements and presents a concrete post-move calendar showing how the child's relationship with both parents would function.

Florida illustrates how specific these statutes can be. Under Fla. Stat. § 61.13001, "relocation" generally means moving the child's principal residence at least 50 miles from the relevant prior residence for at least 60 consecutive days, excluding certain temporary absences. If the required parties do not agree, the relocating parent generally must file and serve a petition containing a proposed post-relocation time-sharing and transportation plan; an objection to that petition is generally due within 20 days after service.

That is Florida's framework, not a nationwide rule. The 60-day figure describes the duration component of Florida's statutory definition of relocation — it is not a universal "60-day notice" rule. Other states use different distances, notice periods, procedures and burdens.

Official source: Fla. Stat. § 61.13001.

Communication between visits: video calls cannot replace in-person parenting time, but predictable communication can reduce long gaps. Avoid both extremes — "reasonable contact" may be too vague, while a rigid daily call at one exact minute may fail around activities and time zones. Consider a defined window, frequency and responsibility for making the child reasonably available.

Do not silently convert a local schedule into long distance. If an existing order says every other weekend and one parent moves hundreds of miles away, keeping the same words may create an impossible order. Show the replacement calendar explicitly — old: alternating weekends + Wednesday evening; proposed: one long weekend monthly + spring break + extended summer + defined virtual contact — so everyone evaluates the actual trade rather than debating abstract percentages.