Listed below are eight potential risk factors for identifying a custodial parent who desires to relocate based on an underlying motivation to interfere in the relationship between the nonresidential parent and his or her offspring:

1. a parent who threatens to relocate the children;  

2  a parent with significant anger;  

3. a parent who lies repeatedly;  

4. a parent with a history of interfering with visitation;  

5. a parent who has not been punished by the court for prior interference with visitation;  

6. a parent with a history of willfully defying a court order;  

7. a parent exhibiting parental alienation syndrome, and  

8. a parent exhibiting divorce-related malicious mother syndrome.  

R.A. Gardner, The Parental Alienation Syndrome and the Differentiation Between Fabricated and Genuine Child Sex Abuse (Creskill. N.J., Creative Therapeutics 1987); R.A. Gardner, Family Evaluation in Child Custody Mediation, Arbitration. and Litigation (Creskill, N.J., Creative Therapeutics 1989). See also Kenneth H. Waldron & David E. Joanis, Understanding and Collaboratively Treating Parental Alienation Syndrome, 10 Am. J. Fam. L. 121 (Fall 1996).  

Divorce-related malicious mother syndrome was first described by this author regarding the custodial mother who aims to hurt her former marital partner through any means, including using the children as a tool for injury. Turkat, supra note 2, and Turkat, supra note 3.  

RELOCATION AS A STRATEGY TO INTERFERE WITH THE CHILD-PARENT RELATIONSHIP

IRA DANIEL TURKAT, PH.D. Venice, Florida from AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FAMILY LAW, VOL. 11, 39-41 (1996)