Just to play devil’s advocate, what reason would she have to move? Why would her meal ticket disappear just because the father moved closer?
From what I can tell all that would be achieved if he moved closer is he could have a more active part in their lives just because his proximity would probably result in the court giving him more frequent (but shorter duration) visitation. Now, that has great value from an emotional perspective, because honestly kids don’t place a lot of importance on the sort of support that child support payments give.
Him moving closer would not get him out of child support, and the most likely reason a judge hasn’t awarded him custody is simply because the mother has always been the primary caregiver. What a lot of people involved in family court affairs fail to realize is there is a wide range of things that parents do differently, and generally unless you can get a judge to truly agree the parent is causing material harm to the child (and not just parenting in a way you consider to be substandard) the primary caregiver is always going to win primary custody.
Things that some people think are the most important thing in the world, like making sure the kids do well in school, making sure the kids do more than just play video games and et cetera usually won’t be grounds for someone losing custody of their children. That’s really how a court looks at things, way back when it initially granted custody to the mother, the court took the position that the mother was the primary caregiver for the child. In the mind’s of many family court judges, unless the mother’s actions would actually result in the child being removed from the home sans other parent, it’s unlikely the court is going to effectively revoke an earlier custody agreement.
Based on this thread Susan wouldn’t lose her children to CPS if she was a single mother with no father in the picture at all, nor has she lost her children in this case because while she may not be a “great” mother, that isn’t the standard a court uses to determine custody.
During the lives of many children, parents suitability for parenting may change. For example say a couple gets divorced and the mother is the primary caregiver but is college educated, has excellent parenting skills and a steady part time income. The father makes more money but was less involved in raising the children, such a situation would of course result in the mother having custody with the father getting visitation. Now imagine a few years later the mother has a string of bad relationships with abusive men and she gets depressed. Her parenting skills suffer and her kids get bad grades in school and stay up playing video games. At this point should the father get custody? What if later down the road the father loses his job and starts dating a woman who has a criminal record, while the mother gets her life back together? Should the kids go back to the mom? Well, what if the mom falls back into depression or gets with another abusive man? Back to the dad?
See, we don’t want family courts constantly evaluating two parents and saying “well, A + B + C > F, so this time around custody goes to the father.” While it creates heartache it’s much more in the interest of “children and families” as a whole to only change primary custody and thus the primary caregiver of a child when absolutely necessary. Variations in quality of parenting, as long as it doesn’t enter into neglect or something that would get social services involved, shouldn’t change established custody agreements.
