What are the consequences of moving out of state with a child without the courts approval? We just found out our lease won’t be renewing for our apartment and with the insane cost of renting in Florida now my husband and I simply can’t afford to stay here and keep a roof over our childrens head. The average rent right now starts around $2,400 and goes up from there which is impossible for us to afford and we’d never even qualify for anything because they require 3x rent in income which we don’t have even with both of us working full time. So we have absolutely no option but to leave Florida and we only have 5 weeks to be out of our unit. We were both offered jobs by my husbands mother if we move north to where his family is but we’d have income immediately and a place to rent to that’s 1/3 of what it cost in Florida for a bigger place. My daughter does school virtually so she would be able to continue to do school through that same program. But she’s 13yrs old and in 9th grade so she’s older and she’s never met her biological father. He’s currently trying to fight me for 50/50 custody despite having no place of his own to live, a permanent injunction on him for dv involving his other children and their mother, and admitted continued marijuana use multiple times daily to the judge in that case just a few weeks ago. He doesn’t live a stable life that my daughter should even be exposed to especially not when I’m the only parent she’s even been with and known. I plan on filing the paperwork to ask for permission from the court to relocate but I know he’s going to fight me on it especially if the court grants him some sort of custody/visitation when we go to trial next week. But we have absolutely no choice but to leave this state and we have other children we have to also think about being able to support and keep housed we can’t just have our entire family on the streets because of this man that’s never been part of her life and isn’t even stable.
But what exactly are the consequences that I’m looking at if the court doesn’t grant me permission to move with her(since I know he’ll fight it) and I do it anyways because we literally have absolutely no choice? We have no place to go, no family here to help, nothing. Up north we have jobs waiting, a place to rent we can afford, family to help us out, etc but am I going to end up getting arrested because we have no choice but to move and I refuse to leave my daughter behind by herself when she’s 13 and I’m the only parent she’s ever known? I’m from Florida