Loading…
Connecticut Supreme Court · 1998
246 Conn. 413 (1998)
Adopted a burden-shifting framework for child relocation: the custodial parent must first prove a legitimate purpose and reasonable destination, after which the noncustodial parent must prove the move is not in the child's best interests; adopted the Tropea factors, which weigh the quality of the child's relationship with each parent and the impact of the move on future contact with the noncustodial parent.
Some later courts have distinguished or questioned it — read before relying.
Treatment last confirmed July 18, 2026. Case-wide subsequent treatment; human-set. Not specific to any one passage.
A small, methodologically limited body of research suggests that post-separation relocation that increases a child's distance from a parent is, on average, associated with somewhat worse adjustment; the evidence is thin, largely retrospective or cross-sectional, confounded by conflict and selection, and the field's own experts conclude it supports no presumption either for or against relocation.
Custody and divorce mediation, compared with litigation, settles disputes faster and with higher party satisfaction and durable improvements in nonresidential-parent involvement and coparenting — benefits visible up to 12 years later in a randomized trial — without increasing conflict; however, benefits are not symmetric across parents and, in high-conflict or intimate-partner-violence cases, mediation requires safety protocols and shows no clear advantage over litigation.
Positive, engaged father (or father-figure) involvement is associated with better child social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and academic outcomes; the benefit tracks the quality of positive engagement and the father-child relationship, not the sheer quantity of contact or financial support, and the associations are small in magnitude and substantially confounded by selection.