Mother Considered Moving Out of State With Her Kids After Losing Her House to Financial Hardship — After Her Ex Refused Child Support

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A 37-year-old mom says she’s staring down the kind of deadline that doesn’t care about custody schedules or good intentions: she may lose her house within months, even though she works full time. After two years of a stable co-parenting routine with her ex, she’s now considering a move seven hours away to a more affordable area—one she believes would let her keep a roof over her kids’ heads and stop living on the edge.

But when she floated the idea, she says her ex, 40, reacted like she was trying to take the children from him. In the original post, she asked if she’d be wrong to take the matter to court so she can relocate with their two kids, ages 6 and 4, after he refused to pay child support.

A split that worked—until money stopped working

According to her account, the breakup happened two years ago, and the co-parenting arrangement has been unusually smooth. The parents live about 10 minutes apart, which makes school, daycare, and handoffs straightforward.

The schedule is also well-established: she has the children from Sunday afternoon through Thursday afternoon, while he has them Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon. In other words, both parents get real time, and the kids have a predictable rhythm.

That stability is why she says the next part feels so painful. She lives in an expensive state and claims she’s now struggling hard enough that foreclosure is a real possibility. She says she doesn’t qualify for state help because she’s employed full time, yet her pay still isn’t stretching far enough to cover normal bills plus the extra costs of childcare.

The child support fight and the “contract” hanging over it

The financial pressure isn’t just rent or groceries, she says—it’s also the way money has been handled since the split. Her ex refuses to pay child support, she wrote, and she attributes that refusal to a “contract” she says he had her sign after he paid off a repossessed car they owned together.

She also shared a detail that seems to fuel her frustration: when she left, she says he was supposed to sell their house and split the profit so she could pay off the car. Instead, she claims, he decided to keep the house roughly four months after she moved out.

Now, she’s the one facing the loss of her current home. And from her perspective, the math is turning into a trap—stay close to keep the custody schedule intact, or move somewhere she can afford and risk being framed as the parent “taking the kids away.”

A relocation plan built around long visits and no child support

She isn’t describing a cross-country disappearance. The place she wants to move is about seven hours away by car, and roughly an hour and a half by plane. She says wages there are “pretty decent,” and she believes she can make life “work beautifully” in a way she can’t in her current state.

To make the move feel less like a loss for her ex, she proposed what she called an unusually generous arrangement. She would not seek child support. She would also bring the kids to him once per month for a weekend visit.

On top of that, she offered him every school break and all of summer break with the children. And if he chose to travel to where she and the kids would live, she said she’d pay 50% of his lodging—whether that meant a hotel or an Airbnb.

Even with those offers, she says he’s been guilt-tripping her and portraying her as a bad parent for considering it. She wrote that staying would likely mean taking on another full-time job just to keep up with basic bills, without even counting daycare.

Why the move isn’t just about preference

In her telling, this isn’t about chasing a new relationship or wanting a fresh start for its own sake. It’s about survival and what she sees as a narrowing set of options.

If she can’t keep her housing stable, the consequences could be immediate for the kids: changing schools abruptly, scrambling for childcare, and living with the stress of a parent trying to juggle two full-time jobs. She framed relocation as the one path that gives her a chance to stay financially steady without sacrificing being present.

At the same time, the move would obviously change the father’s routine. Right now he lives close enough to share weekday and weekend time. Under her plan, he would shift into something closer to a long-distance parenting schedule—more concentrated blocks of time, less day-to-day involvement.

That tradeoff is the heart of her question: is it wrong to go to court for custody modifications so she can move, if the alternative is potentially losing her home and falling deeper into hardship?

Commenters pointed to court, paperwork, and the support question

The post drew a clear overall verdict label: “Everyone Sucks.” Even so, the most practical theme running through responses wasn’t about who “wins” emotionally—it was about what a judge will consider and what documentation matters.

People focused on the idea that moving a significant distance away with young children often requires a formal custody change, and that “handshake” arrangements or informal contracts may not hold up the way one parent hopes. Commenters also zoomed in on the child support piece, noting that child support is generally treated as money meant for the children, not a bargaining chip between adults.

Others questioned whether waiving support is truly “generous” if it comes with moving the kids farther away, and suggested that if she’s truly struggling, formal support might be part of what keeps the children stable—especially if she’s already describing an imminent housing loss.

At the same time, some took her core point seriously: if she cannot afford to remain where she is, refusing to acknowledge that reality doesn’t make it disappear. In that view, a structured long-distance plan—especially one that includes school breaks and summers—may be more realistic than forcing a parent into financial collapse.

A decision that could reset both households

For now, she says she feels stuck between being painted as the villain and doing what she believes is necessary to provide a better quality of life. She’s weighing whether to file in court for the custody change that would allow the move, despite the conflict it will likely escalate.

Her offer signals she’s trying to preserve a meaningful relationship between the kids and their father, but her ex’s reaction makes clear he sees the proposal as a major loss. With a housing deadline approaching, she isn’t talking about a distant “someday” decision—she’s talking about a ticking clock, and a plan that could reshape how both parents raise their children from here on out.