The Honorable Joe Dunn
Chair, California Senate Judiciary Committee
California State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: 916-445-8390

Re: Opposition to SB 1482

Dear Chairman Dunn:

The Alliance for Children Concerned About Move-Aways, a group of family law and mental health professionals who believe that children’s need for frequent and meaningful contact with both parents after a divorce is paramount, believe that SB 1482 is against children’s best interests. SB 1482 will make it more difficult for children of divorce to retain the loving bonds they share with both parents.

SB 1482 specifically prohibits a parent seeking to prevent his or her children from being moved far away from citing most of the evidence that could provide a basis for restraining the move. Under this bill, nonmoving parents are prevented from citing the move's impact on their children's relationships with them or the effects on the children of losing their schools and friends. This directly abrogates current California case law, which says that the children's relationship with their nonmoving parent must be considered when deciding a relocation case.

SB 1482 is an attempt by misguided feminists to reverse the progress made on behalf of California's children of divorce over the past two years. From 1996 to 2004 move-away determinations were been based on the Burgess decision, in which a custodial mother was allowed to move her two children 40 miles away from their father. Burgess was disastrous for children because it was interpreted by California courts to permit moves of hundreds or thousands of miles. In some cases, courts have even allowed children to be moved out of the country, as far away as Australia, New Zealand and Zaire. Under Burgess the bonds between tens of thousands of children and their noncustodial parents were needlessly ruptured.

The LaMusga move-away case, decided by the California Supreme Court in 2004, is a good example of the way custodial parents were permitted to move children far away without justification. In that case the mother sought to move her two boys from the Bay Area to Ohio because, she claimed, she wanted to attend a law school there. Apparently none of the multitude of law schools in the Bay Area sufficed. Later she moved to Arizona because, she explained, her new husband needed work. His job? Selling cars.

The California Supreme Court addressed this problem in LaMusga by making it clear that courts can prevent children from being moved when it is detrimental to their interests. Among the factors deemed important were the relationship between the child and the nonmoving parent.

The LaMusga decision put children first. SB 1482 will throw us back to the dark, pre-LaMusga days when a child’s bond with a loving parent could be destroyed at the whim of a selfish or vindictive ex-spouse. We oppose.

Sincerely,

Glenn Sacks
Executive Director
Alliance for Children Concerned About Move-Aways