Noah Baumbach’s latest film, Marriage Story, chronicles the breakdown of a marriage between a director, Charlie, and his actor wife, Nicole, as they struggle through a divorce trying to co-parent while living on opposite coasts. When the marriage falls apart, Nicole moves from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, where her family lives, with their young son Henry for a job opportunity. Charlie contests Nicole’s relocation to L.A., which separates him from Henry and negatively impacts his parenting time with Henry, arguing over and over “we’re a New York family.” This is a reality many divorced parents face. The emotional and financial consequences of divorce can often result in one or both parents moving to a different state or sometimes, less dramatically, a different town or county within the same state. Where there is a true shared custody arrangement (i.e., both parents have substantial parenting time with their children), a relocation can substantially affect parenting time and can thus become a hotly-contested issue.

Here in New Jersey, when a parent wants to relocate to another state, like Nicole did in Marriage Story, this is considered interstate relocation. When a parent wants to relocate within the borders of New Jersey, for example from Bergen County to Monmouth County, it is known as intrastate relocation. The legal standards for both interstate and intrastate removal have changed dramatically over the last 20 years, and the New Jersey courts have, up until recently, treated the two types of relocation differently. Now, however, following the Appellate Division’s recent decision in A.J. v. R.J., __ N.J. Super. __, 2019 WL 4924420 (App. Div. 2019), both interstate and intrastate relocation cases are assessed under the same standard—the best interests of the child standard.