Blake v. Blake

In Blake v. Blake, 207 Conn. 217, 541 A.2d 1201 (1988), the plaintiff wife, during the trial for the dissolution of the parties' marriage, sought to relocate to California with the parties' three minor children. The trial court awarded joint custody, but gave primary physical custody to the plaintiff and permitted her to relocate with the children to California. Relying on a number of New York cases, on appeal the defendant in Blake claimed that the trial court improperly permitted the plaintiff to relocate to California because it did not require the plaintiff to demonstrate a compelling reason to justify relocating. Noting that the cases on which the defendant based his claim all involved postjudgment modification requests to relocate, our Supreme Court held: "We are not concerned with the modification of a previous judicial determination involving the place of the child's residence but with the initial resolution . . . in the dissolution decree . . . ." Id. at 221. Accordingly, the Court held that the postjudgment relocation cases that the defendant relied on were distinguishable from and inapplicable to that case, which involved the initial resolution of the residence issue in the dissolution decree. Id.