My ex-husband and I have joint custody in chicago IL. After both of us being unemployed for over a year, I informed him that I wanted to begin a new life in the southwest (where we formerly lived) and go back to school for my masters degree. He *seemed* amenable and I asked him to draw up a long-distance visitation agreement to his liking as a starting point to a custody modification discussion. A week later I was served with a temporary restraining order. At this time I have already registered with school and have an apartment waiting for me to move into within the month. I explained to the judge I was expecting to come to her with a custody amendment and was unprepared to face a restarining order and I already have plans in motion to move forward. She agrees with him that this makes me a "flight risk" and makes the order permanent! I cannot afford counsel nor the time to ****er this out. I cannot leave her with him until we work this out-he will never return her to me. Can anyone tell me what my next course of action should be?

Well I can tell you what your FIRST course of action should have been. You should have gotten the visitation modification BEFORE you made any plans. Because you didn't you are in this fix. The judge was correct. He has to agree to any modification. Unless you had proof that he did agree, you had no business making plans.

Now you have the choice of canceling your plans or moving without your child. Then going back to court and applying for a modification.

Yes, for you to move with the child, you ex has to agree to any changes, if he has regular visits why should he want to love his contact with his child. When my wife and I divorced we had it so that one could not move more than 30 miles from current address, as not to interfere with custody and visits.

So yes, you should not have made a single plan till you had this agreement.

So what visit terms did you think was fair, if you believed that it was fair to have him only see the child on certain times, you merely reverse the roles, let the child stay with him and you accept the limited visits.