Get a Court Order Before You Move: The Most Important Advice for New Long Distance Parents

Last Updated on May 11, 2026 by Distance Parent

There is one piece of advice for new long distance parents that stands above everything else: get a court order before you move and make your parenting plan exactly what you want. Even if your relationship with your co-parent is great, and you can both envision the healthiest co-parenting arrangement. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

A longtime Distance Parent community member shares her experience below and why this advice matters more than any other.

Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, consult a qualified family law attorney.

Why Good Co-Parenting Relationships Go Bad

It may sound pessimistic, but it is about being pragmatic. When you got married, you did not think you would get divorced. That is because we do not see the worst case scenarios when things are good. If things are great with your co-parent, it can be similarly tempting to see only a rosy outcome.

Co-parenting relationships can turn upside down for a number of reasons. Here are the most common ones:

Family and friends of your co-parent do not understand long distance parenting, so they believe and perpetuate the stigma. They do not have all the facts because they have distance from the situation. However, they have influence over your co-parent. Their influence, without being grounded in fact, can upend even the best co-parenting arrangement.

Your co-parent, now a full-time parent, feels resentment or frustration. They might feel like you abandoned them. Everything you get or do feels like a concession or liberty to them. Likewise, everything they have to do feels like an insult. Frustration and resentment can grow quietly over time.

Your co-parent has a new partner. The partner wants to feel involved in the child’s life and secure in their place in the family. In an effort to appease the partner, your co-parent might make decisions that harm your co-parenting relationship.

Poor communication. A good portion of the content on this site centers around resolving communication issues between co-parents. Poor communication is easily the biggest reason things do not go well in a long distance co-parenting relationship. One small miscommunication piled on top of another, and before you know it, it is difficult to tell where things went wrong.

All that said, completely amicable long-distance co-parenting relationships do happen. Not all go bad. Generally, relationships that go well do so as a result of a lot of hard work on both sides. In the experience of the Distance Parent community, those cases are in the minority. And so, the advice to new long distance parents is always the same: get a court order before you move, and make it exactly what you want.

One Community Member’s Story

“My son’s father and I split quite peacefully. Though we both experienced pain and hurt from the breakup, we remained friends. We talked a lot about our ideal co-parenting arrangement. My co-parent and I wanted our son to always have both parents and we wanted to cooperate and co-parent. We had a verbal agreement and then went to an attorney to get it in writing.

When we went to the attorney, I think it’s fair to say that it felt like a stretch to both of us to go through all of that. We did it because dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s in writing just seemed like a good, responsible idea. Weeks went by, and each time I would call to check with the attorney, the attorney hadn’t filed the agreement. In the meantime, I was preparing to move. Later, I would learn that the attorney, a co-parent, family friend, likely did a favor for that family member by not filing the paperwork.

Then my co-parent’s significant other got involved. Suddenly, my son’s father decided he wouldn’t send my son to live with me, as we had agreed. My co-parent filed for divorce and sole custody on the grounds of abandonment.

After a lot of legal back-and-forth, we got a court order and parenting plan in place. My son’s father did not get sole custody, and I did get virtual and in-person visitation. However, I fought tooth and nail to get things into the parenting plan that he had only months prior assured me were in the best interest of our son. I was on the back foot, having already moved, at a time when long-distance parenting plans were not a thing.

I lost friends, I lost my co-parent’s family, and I lost track of all of the names and accusations slung at me. But after the fact, I was eternally grateful that I fought so hard to get everything included. Later, once everything was in writing, he tried several times to restrict my visitation, and I had to fall back on the legal document we signed. My son would tell me things that they talked about regarding me, and thankfully, my court order was specific in disallowing that. Being relentless paid off in the form of a relationship with my child. Having consistent access to him and having regular visitation were critical.

For what it’s worth, my co-parent and I are friends again. It would take many years to heal the relationship. In my case, all four of the possibilities I listed above were at play. Eventually, those things were less of an issue.”

The Bottom Line

The Distance Parent community has gathered these stories for over two decades. The pattern is consistent: parents who had a court order in place before they moved had something to stand on when things got hard. Parents who did not had to fight twice as hard from a much weaker position.

Get the court order. Get it before you move. Make it exactly what you want. The Distance Parent community is here when you need support along the way.