My cousin's daughter's father has full custody (she has her on the weekends). He wants to move from MA to FL. What's the likelihood of this actually happening?

Well I'm not sure either but I sincerely appreciate your response.

There's a whole messy back story and neither of them are innocent. They were 19 when they had the baby. The dad ditched out on my cousin and the baby to go drink and party and be a 19 year old kid. My cousin was a single mom for about a year then really caved under pressure. The daughter lived with my cousin's grandma for a while when neither of them could provide for her. Eventually, they both got their shit together (in terms of employment and just taking care of shit as (semi) responsible adults). The dad got married and had another baby. The dad and his new wife eventually got custody and immediately started child support payments (although he never paid and financial support to the grandma). They were supposed to live with his parents in one area of MA but then moved almost across the state to another area of MA. Now they live with her parents. The new wife is... a handful. Immediately started having the daughter call her mom. They even threatened the child support payments and said that if my cousin signed over her parental rights, she wouldn't have to pay them (obviously this did not happen).

My cousin sees her weekends because she works full time during the week. She is basically as involved as her life (and the custody agreement) allows her to be. The daughter recently started kindergarten and the dad has done stupid shit like not tell my cousin about parent-teacher conferences. She wants me to help her write the teacher an e-mail (nothing about this situation is ideal but it's life and it's messy; shit happens). She is very involved with her on weekends and school vacations and her daughter loves her dearly. The daughter often expresses wanting to spend more time with her and move in with her (my cousin is working on getting her own place and then modifying the custody agreement). Like, it's her mother. And she wants her mother in her life. I just can't see her dealing well with never seeing her mom.

She will hash all of this out with a lawyer will but my family is just really scared.

/r/legaladvice Thread