Moving to London for a New Job Without Losing Custody Time

The situation

Valentina had spent six years working as a personal support worker, moving between shift assignments at retirement homes and private clients' houses, never quite earning enough to get ahead. She and her daughter's father, Kostas, had never married. Their relationship had ended when their daughter, Gabriela, was two, and since then they had shared parenting time under an informal arrangement worked out between themselves: Gabriela lived primarily with Valentina, and spent alternating weekends and one weeknight with Kostas, a security guard who worked rotating shifts nearby.

Neither of them had ever put the arrangement in writing. It had simply worked, in the loose way that informal arrangements sometimes do between two people who were determined to stay civil for their child's sake.

That changed when Valentina was offered a full-time position with benefits, paying meaningfully more than the patchwork of part-time shifts she had been stringing together. The position was in London, roughly two hours from where she and Kostas both lived. It was the kind of opportunity that does not come twice — stable hours, extended health coverage, a real path off a household income that had sat under $45,000 for years. She wanted to take it. She also knew that simply packing up and moving with their daughter, without talking to Kostas first, could turn a good decision into a serious legal problem.

The legal problem

Under the Divorce Act and Ontario's Children's Law Reform Act, a parent who wants to move with a child in a way that would significantly affect the child's relationship with the other parent generally has to give written notice of the relocation before it happens. The notice has to include specifics: where the parent intends to move, when, and what parenting arrangement is being proposed once the move happens. The other parent then has a window to object.

This requirement applies whether or not the parents were ever married, and whether or not there is an existing court order. Valentina and Kostas had never been to court, but the notice obligation still applied to any parent who has parenting time or decision-making responsibility for a child, because the law is concerned with the child's relationship with both parents, not with the formality of the parents' own relationship.

Skipping the notice, or moving first and explaining later, carries real risk. A parent who relocates without proper notice, or without either the other parent's consent or a court's permission, can be ordered to return the child, can damage their own credibility in front of a judge on every issue that follows, and can find themselves defending a last-minute emergency motion instead of a planned, negotiated move. Courts weighing a relocation look at the reason for the move, the proposed new parenting arrangement, the child's views where appropriate for their age, and the extent to which the relocating parent facilitated the child's relationship with the other parent throughout the process — and a parent who tried to shortcut the notice requirement has already answered that last question badly.

Kostas, for his part, had no interest in blocking a move that would clearly benefit his daughter's stability and his co-parent's income. But he did have real concerns about how weekend visits and the weeknight dinner would work across a two-hour drive, and those concerns were legitimate and needed an answer before, not after, the moving truck was booked.

What we did

1. Prepared a formal relocation notice, months ahead of the planned move. Valentina had roughly ten weeks between accepting the job offer and her intended start date. We drafted a written notice addressed to Kostas that set out the destination, the reason for the move, the proposed start date, and a detailed proposed parenting schedule for after the move — giving him real time to consider it rather than a fait accompli.
2. Built a parenting schedule around distance, not around the old routine. The existing weekday-and-weekend pattern could not survive a two-hour drive without exhausting everyone, especially a young child. We proposed longer, less frequent blocks — most school breaks, a full weekend roughly every three weeks, and extended time in the summer — along with regular video calls in between, so the total time Kostas spent with his daughter over a year would not meaningfully shrink even though the day-to-day pattern would look different.
3. Addressed transportation and cost directly in the proposal. A schedule that requires a low-income parent to absorb regular long-distance driving costs on their own tends to break down within months, regardless of what is written on paper. We built in a shared approach to travel costs and a rotating pickup arrangement, so the burden of the distance did not fall entirely on one household.
4. Negotiated directly with Kostas rather than filing in court first. Kostas had not retained a lawyer, and rather than treat that as leverage, we encouraged him to have the proposal reviewed independently before signing anything, and gave him a realistic period to respond. He raised two changes — a slightly longer summer block and a fixed weekly call time — both of which were reasonable and were incorporated without dispute.
5. Documented the final agreement in writing and filed it as a consent order. Once Kostas agreed, we did not leave the new arrangement as an informal understanding the way the original schedule had been. We put it before the court as a consent order, which meant it was enforceable going forward and would not depend on both parents continuing to remember and honour an unwritten deal once the pressure of a new job, a new city, and a new routine set in.

The outcome

Kostas signed the revised parenting arrangement roughly three weeks after receiving the initial notice, well within the window Valentina needed to give notice to her new employer and arrange the move. There was no court hearing, no motion, and no finding that either parent had acted improperly — because neither of them had to. The relocation notice did what it is meant to do: it turned a potential dispute into a negotiation, conducted with enough lead time that both parents could think clearly instead of reacting to a move already in motion.

Valentina relocated to London on schedule and started the new position at the wage and benefit level that had made the move worthwhile in the first place. Gabriela finished the school year in her old school and started the new one that September, with the summer used for the extended visit block the new schedule provided. Kostas kept a real, substantial relationship with his daughter — different in shape from the old routine, but not diminished in total time, and now backed by an enforceable order rather than an arrangement either parent could simply stop honouring.

The case worked because it was never allowed to become adversarial. Valentina's decision to give formal notice months in advance, rather than informing Kostas after signing a lease in London, meant he never had to choose between fighting the move in court or accepting it on no notice at all. That choice — the one Valentina avoided forcing on him — is usually where relocation disputes turn expensive, slow, and bitter. Consent orders of this kind typically take a matter of weeks to finalize once both parents agree on terms; contested relocations that end up in front of a judge often take the better part of a year, with no guarantee the outcome resembles what either parent proposed.

For a household living on a modest income, avoiding that path was not just emotionally easier. It meant no motion costs, no extended time off work for court appearances, and no months of uncertainty about whether the job offer would still be available by the time a judge could hear the matter.

What you can learn from this