The call usually comes with a job offer attached, or a remarriage, or an aging parent four states away. The question is always the same, and it is always urgent: can I move, and can I take my child with me?
Wisconsin answers those as two separate questions, and conflating them is the most common mistake people make. You may live where you like. What you may not do — once a court has entered a placement order — is unilaterally relocate the child far enough away to break the other parent’s schedule. Section 767.481 of the Wisconsin Statutes governs that second question, and it has a specific trigger, a specific timetable, and a set of presumptions that decide a surprising number of these cases before anyone reaches the merits.
The trigger is 100 driving miles — not a state line
Under § 767.481 (1) (a), if the court has granted periods of physical placement to both parents and one parent intends to relocate and reside with the child 100 driving miles or more from the other parent, that parent must file a motion with the court seeking permission for the relocation.
Three things in that sentence do more work than people expect.
It is distance, not borders. A move from New Berlin to Madison is nobody’s idea of leaving Wisconsin, but the mileage is what the statute measures. Conversely, a short hop across the Illinois line may not trigger the motion requirement at all. Note also that the statute speaks in driving miles — the road distance between the two residences, not the straight-line distance a map application will give you by default.
It requires placement to both parents. The motion requirement in par. (a) is written for cases where the court granted periods of physical placement to both parents. Where that is not the arrangement, the analysis is different, and it is worth having someone read your actual judgment rather than assuming.
It is relocating and residing with the child. The statute is not a travel ban. A separate provision, § 767.481 (6), requires a person who has legal custody of and periods of physical placement with a child to notify any other person with periods of physical placement before removing the child from the child’s residence for more than 14 consecutive days — which is how long summer trips and extended stays are handled, without a motion.
If you already live more than 100 miles apart, the rule flips
This is the exception most people never hear about. Under § 767.481 (1) (d), the motion requirement does not apply if the child’s parents already live more than 100 driving miles apart when one of them proposes to relocate. In that situation the relocating parent must instead serve written notice of the intent to relocate on the other parent at least 60 days before the move, and the notice must include the date of the intended relocation and the new address.
That is a notice obligation, not a permission obligation. It does not, however, strip the other parent of the ability to bring a placement motion of their own if the move genuinely disrupts the schedule.
Before the judgment: the automatic prohibition nobody reads
If your divorce or paternity case is still pending, a different statute already binds you. Section 767.117 (1) (c) — which reaches every action affecting the family except one brought solely for maintenance payments or for property division, s. 767.001 (1) (g) and (h) — prohibits both parties, the petitioner from the moment of filing and the respondent from the moment of service, from relocating and establishing a residence with a minor child of the parties more than 100 driving miles from the other party’s residence, from removing the child from the state for more than 90 consecutive days, or from concealing the child from the other party, absent the other party’s consent or a court order. Those prohibitions run until the action is dismissed, until final judgment, or until the court orders otherwise.
Violating them may be pursued as contempt under ch. 785. The statute carves out one narrow safe harbor: an act violating par. (c) is not contempt if the court finds it was taken to protect a party or a minor child from physical abuse by the other party and there was no reasonable opportunity to obtain an order first.
What the motion has to contain
Section 767.481 (1) (b) is a checklist, and an incomplete motion is an invitation to lose time you do not have. The motion must include a relocation plan setting out the date of the proposed relocation; the municipality and state of the proposed new residence; the reason for the relocation; if applicable, a proposed new placement schedule covering the school year, summers, and holidays; and the proposed allocation between the parents of responsibility and cost for transporting the child under that schedule. If the relocating parent also wants a change in legal custody, the request goes in the same motion.
The motion must also notify the other parent that an objection — together with any alternate proposal, including a modification of physical placement or legal custody — must be filed and served no later than five days before the initial hearing, and it must have a court-furnished “Objection to Relocation” form attached.
Service is by mail at the other parent’s most recent address on file with the court. If the filing parent has actual knowledge of a different address, the motion must go to both.
The timetable moves faster than most family-law motions
The court must schedule an initial hearing within 30 days after the motion is filed. The child may not be relocated pending that hearing.
What happens next depends entirely on whether the other parent shows up and objects.
If the other parent was properly served and does not appear, or appears without objecting, the court approves the proposed relocation plan — unless it finds the plan is not in the child’s best interest. That is a low bar for the relocating parent and a costly silence for the other one.
If the other parent appears and objects, four things happen under § 767.481 (2) (c). The objecting parent must state the basis for the objection in writing within five business days, along with proposals for a new placement schedule and for transportation responsibility and costs. The court refers the parties to mediation unless it finds mediation would cause undue hardship or endanger a party’s health or safety. Except in the narrow circumstance described in § 767.407 (1) (am), the court appoints a guardian ad litem for the child, and the appointment order must provide that, where a mediator has been ordered, the guardian ad litem need not commence investigation unless the mediator notifies the court that the parties cannot agree. And the court sets a further hearing within 60 days.
Moving before the final hearing
Sometimes the job starts in three weeks. Section 767.481 (3) (a) allows the court, at or after the initial hearing, to issue a temporary order permitting the relocation if it finds the move is in the child’s immediate best interest — while informing the parties that the approval is subject to revision at the final hearing. It is genuine relief, but it is not a decision, and a parent who treats a temporary order as the end of the matter is building a life on a finding the court has expressly reserved the right to undo.
If a court commissioner rather than a judge makes that call, either party may seek a hearing de novo. The motion must be filed within 10 days after the commissioner orally issues the ruling, and the judge must hold the de novo hearing within 30 days after that motion, absent good cause for an extension.
How the court actually decides
At the final hearing the analysis splits.
Where the proposed relocation only minimally changes the current placement schedule, or does not change it at all, § 767.481 (4) (a) directs the court to approve the relocation, set a new schedule if appropriate, and allocate transportation costs and responsibility. This is worth engineering toward. A relocation plan built to preserve the other parent’s time — longer but less frequent blocks, school-year and summer trade-offs, a realistic transportation allocation — is not merely good faith; it can move the case into the paragraph where approval is the statutory instruction rather than the contested question.
In every other case, the court applies the fourteen best-interest factors of § 767.41 (5) — the wishes of the parents and of the child, the cooperation and communication between the parties, whether each parent can support the other’s relationship with the child, the child’s relationships with siblings and others, the amount and quality of time each parent has spent with the child, substance abuse, the child’s adjustment to home, school, religion, and community, the child’s age and developmental needs, mental and physical health, criminal records and evidence of abuse or neglect, evidence of interspousal battery or domestic abuse, the reports of appropriate professionals, and any other factor the court determines to be relevant — plus two presumptions specific to relocation.
The two presumptions, and why they decide cases
Section 767.481 (4) (b) instructs the court to presume it should approve the relocating parent’s plan in two situations: where the objecting parent has not significantly exercised court-ordered physical placement, and where the relocation is related to abuse of the child, a pattern or serious incident of interspousal battery, or a pattern or serious incident of domestic abuse as those terms are statutorily defined.
A parallel presumption in par. (c) runs against transferring legal custody or the child’s residence to a parent who the court determines has significantly failed to exercise court-ordered placement, if that parent files a responsive motion seeking such a transfer.
The consequence is in § 767.481 (4) (d). The moving party ordinarily bears the burden of proof. But where one of those presumptions applies, the burden flips: it is then the objecting parent who must demonstrate that the proposed relocation is not in the child’s best interest. In practice this means a parent who has let placement time lapse over the preceding years is objecting from a materially weaker position than they expect, and a parent contemplating a move should understand exactly how the other side’s actual exercise of placement will be characterized before the motion is filed.
Relocation is not governed by the two-year rule
This trips up parents who have read about post-judgment modification — and it trips up some of the general legal content on the internet. Section 767.451, which imposes the two-year restriction on modifying custody and placement and the substantial-change-of-circumstances standard after that, opens with the words “Except for matters under s. 767.461 or 767.481.” Relocation runs on its own track. A parent is not required to wait two years from the judgment, and is not required to prove a substantial change of circumstances, to bring a relocation motion.
The two statutes do connect at one point. Under § 767.481 (4) (e), if the objecting parent has filed a responsive motion seeking a substantial change in placement or a change in legal custody, and the relocating parent then withdraws the relocation motion, fails to pursue it, or is denied permission, the court proceeds on the objecting parent’s motion under § 767.451 — with that statute’s standards. A relocation motion filed and abandoned can therefore leave a custody motion standing that would not otherwise have been on the calendar.
If you agree, put it in writing and file it
Not every move is a fight. Section 767.481 (5) allows the parties, at any time after the motion is filed, to file a stipulation specifying that neither objects to the planned relocation and setting out any agreed modification of legal custody or periods of physical placement, including transportation responsibility and costs. The court incorporates the stipulation into an order unless it finds the modification is not in the child’s best interest.
The temptation, when both parents are being reasonable, is to handle it with a text message. Do not. An unentered agreement gives you nothing to enforce and nothing to point to when the relationship between the parents changes — and the parent who moved without an order is the one who will be explaining themselves.
Why older articles about this are wrong
Wisconsin rewrote its relocation law effective April 5, 2018. Under § 767.481 (7), the current requirements and procedures apply to cases originally commenced on or after that date, and to cases commenced before it in which a legal custody or physical placement order was modified on or after it. Older cases that have not been modified since remain under the prior version of the statute.
The prior version used a different distance threshold and a different procedure, and a great deal of the legal commentary still circulating online — along with published appellate decisions that remain valuable for other purposes — describes that older scheme. If you are reading a summary that does not mention the 100-driving-mile trigger, the motion, and the initial hearing within 30 days, you are reading about a statute that may no longer govern your case.
One thing the court cannot do
A Wisconsin court may not order a parent to live in a designated part of the state on pain of losing custody. That has been the law since Groh v. Groh, 110 Wis. 2d 117 (1983), and the court of appeals treated Groh as still good law in Derleth v. Cordova, 2013 WI App 142 — a decision issued under the pre-2018 version of the relocation statute, and so useful for the principle rather than for the current procedure. What the court decides is where the child resides and how placement is structured — not where you are permitted to live. That distinction is cold comfort to a parent told they may move but the child may not, which is precisely why the relocation plan and the transportation allocation deserve real work rather than a paragraph.
What to do before you sign the lease
The single most consequential error in these cases is sequence. Parents accept the offer, give notice, sign a lease, enroll the child in a new school, and only then file the motion — arriving in court with the move already framed as a fait accompli, which is exactly the posture the statute’s 30-day initial hearing and its bar on relocating pending that hearing are designed to prevent. It also hands the objecting parent the most useful argument available: that this parent decided unilaterally and asked permission afterward.
File first. Build the plan around preserving the other parent’s time rather than around your own convenience. Be honest about the reason for the move, because § 767.481 (1) (b) 1. c. requires you to state it and the court will weigh it. And get a clear-eyed read on how the other parent’s exercise of placement over the past several years will look to a guardian ad litem — because under § 767.481 (4) (b) 2. and (d), that history may determine who carries the burden of proof.
Talk to a New Berlin family law attorney
Relocation cases are decided on a compressed schedule, on a record built early, and frequently on presumptions that attach before the merits are reached. They are not a good place to improvise.
Carson Law Office handles family law matters — divorce, legal separation, custody and physical placement, child support, maintenance, post-judgment modification, relocation, and paternity — throughout New Berlin, Waukesha County, Milwaukee, West Allis, Wauwatosa, and the surrounding communities. If you are weighing a move or facing one, our articles on modifying a custody or placement order, how child support is calculated, and how a Wisconsin divorce actually proceeds cover the surrounding machinery. Call (262) 860-8932 or contact us here to have your own situation measured against the statute before you commit to the move.
This article provides general information about Wisconsin law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; for advice about your own situation, speak with a licensed Wisconsin attorney.