In Re the Marriage of Prusak.
Once a case has been filed in Illinois, a parent cannot move over 25 miles (or 50 miles outside of Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, Will, and McHenry counties) unless the court grants explicitly permission. Relocating with a child can be a complicated, lengthy process if the other parent is not in agreement. The court considers multiple factors when determining whether a parent can relocate.
In the past few years, several famous cases have provided more insight into how a judge will make this decision.
Most recently, the Appellate Court of Illinois Third District decided a case from Will County. In In Re the Marriage of Prusak, the mother wanted to move with three children from Naperville, Illinois, to Evansville, Indiana. The parties were divorced in 2012 and entered an agreement for joint custody with the mother having the majority of parenting time. In 2016, the visitation schedule was modified, so each parent exercises approximately equal time with the children.
The mother’s primary reasoning for relocating was that she could no longer afford to live in Illinois, but the court did not agree. The only evidence presented that moving to Evansville would positively impact the children was that the mother’s residence in Evansville was larger than her apartment in Naperville. The court paid a lot of attention to whether a reasonable allocation of parental responsibilities could be established, and decided it could if the children remained in Illinois with their dad. The court denied the relocation, and the mother filed a motion to reconsider. The two main bases for the motion to reconsider were that the father had not yet established after school care for the children (ages 11 and 15), and he returned home late from work on occasion.
The court then granted the motion to reconsider, allowing the mother to move to Indiana. However, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the court’s decision to allow the mother to move and held that the original order denying the relocation remained in effect. The Appellate Court did not believe that the reasons for the motion to reconsider were enough to justify allowing the relocation.
Moving forward, the courts may well consider the impact of COVID-19 on relocation. With restrictions on travel, high exposure in airports, and differing guidelines along state lines, parenting arrangements are even more challenging to execute.
This is still a developing area of law, and we continue to receive further guidance and clarification from the courts.
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