My 16 year old daughter has decided she wants to finished high school where her older sister (24) lives in Florida. We live in Arizona. All I need to do is to transfer legal custody to my older daughter so that my younger girl can reside with her. I realize that this will also mean that she'll have to be responsible for her medical care and school attendance, etc. Can I simply draw up a clearly worded statement (unlike this question, HA), have it notarized and have that suffice?

Hello Mama:

I'm missing something here. If your daughter wants to go live with her sister, you don't need to do anything other than put her on a plane.

excon

PS> Whatever you might write up and have notarized, WON'T change legal custody. For THAT, you need to go to court.

First there is no such thng as a "simple custody transfer" a custody transfer has to go though the family court, so a petition will be filed in court, a hearing, perhaps a home insepction of her sister. Most likely this would be done in 6 months to a year if it all goes good.

So as noted, you give the sister your power of attorney to be responsible for her sister, this allows her to sign for her for medical care and the such.

And you will still be the responsible party for her medical care ( you can keep her on your health insurance even with her living somewhere else)


** also is to your 16 year olds best interest to let her go live with a 24 year old sister, I am sure she "WANTS" to, since she sees it as party central most likely, less rules and all fun.
Plus it would mean leaving all of her friends a school and more, it just seems there is more to this than just wanting to go to school there. My kids want to do a lot of things, and I have learned this very interesting word, it is "NO" when they want to do things not in their best interest