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My question involves a child custody case from the State of: California
I have a job opportunity in the state of Tennessee. My childs father has not contributed a cent in almost a year. I need this new job, but the father is denying me to take the child. He has court ordered visitations every other weekend. He does see the child, but fails to contribute financially. What can I do?
Get an attorney, go to court for a modification of custody and request permission to relocate. It would help if you include a proposed long-distance parenting plan, preferably one which more or less equals the time Dad currently has (albeit spread out differently).
Luckily for you, California is currently more pro-relocation than against; in other words Dad would have to prove that the relocation is not in the best interests of the child.
However, you need to be prepared to be ordered to pay for all transportation to and from Dad's, and lose most of the summer and vacation time.
(It's not a given that you'll have to pay 100%, but be prepared for it anyway)
I agree with everything stated, but will add a bit
On the subject of dad "not contributing" a cent in the past year. If there is not a court ordered child support in place, you need to have one put in place. If there is an order and he is not complying with it, you should take him back to court for non-payment.
California statutes give a custodial parent the legal "presumption" that they have a right to relocate their child.
This places the legal burden on the non-custodial parent to rebut the presumption.
But the reality is it boils down to the individual judges. This is a presumption that for many reasons is easily rebuttable if a judge wants to make it so, but most should be inclined to initially favor the relocating parent in a relocation dispute.
If relocation is granted, courts are inclined to split travel costs. Cost splitting is often the simplest and most equitable solution, and makes parents more inclined to find the most convenient and cost effective travel and exchange arrangement. Relocating costs should not be viewed by the court as a penalty, since the decision to allow relocation is made in the best interests of the child, and imposing what could easily be a high financial burden on a relocating custodial parent can easily be argued is not in the child's best interest. But in cases where the relocating parent is financially very well off compared to the non-relocating parent, the courts will be inclined to proportion costs accordingly.
If you cannot find any California long distance visitation plans, you should be able to use as a guide the Texas Standard Possession Order, which is easy to find online. This is the best written "standard order" I have seen anywhere. It is reasonable, and has almost no gray areas for parents to argue on. It splits and shifts holiday schedules, and gives the non-custodial parent six weeks during the summer, with the custodial parent two weekends during that period. Depending upon your child's age this may work fine, or may need to be adjusted.
As a US citizen I am trying to marry a woman from Canada and she has a 15 month old daughter. Can she move out of the country if there is no father declared on her birth certificate? And the father has not taken a DNA test as of yet and has paid zero cents in child support and has never been around, but as soon as my girlfriend's ex found out her boyfriend (me) is from California he all of a sudden wants to be in her life. What can we do? Can my GF and her daughter move to the US before he proves he's the father?