The husband and father thought that he had a good technical-procedural, or even constitutional, argument against letting his wife, in the initial custody determination in a divorce case, argue her relocation issue (that she wanted to move the children from Warrenton to Wisconsin). His argument was that since there is a statute requiring 30 days notice of intent to relocate, and there was a pendente lite custody order with the same statutory requirement recited, the wife had no business coming into court and arguing her relocation case. However, to the trial judge in Culpeper County it seemed a highly artificial way to go about this thing if he made the wife try the initial custody determination case with the relocation elephant standing in the corner and everyone pretending it wasn’t there. This is indeed what the husband apparently wanted the judge to make her do, and then she couldn’t move until she had given 30 days notice from at least the time of the new final order -- and then she’d be seeking an instant modification. That just didn’t persuade the trial judge, and it didn’t persuade the Court of Appeals. The judge explained very simply and clearly why he wanted to take a practical approach for the sake of judicial economy, common sense and everything else. And since he gave this full explanation, and the judge’s position was rational, and his decision awarding the mother custody and allowing her to move the children out of state, will stand. The Court of Appeals goes to some rather complex efforts to explain its approval of this procedure, which is a lot more appealing than the Supreme Court’s position in Parrish v. Spaulding was, and some of its reasoning going beyond all that may be regarded by some as questionable, but the result reached would seem in any case to be fairly sound. Judd v. Judd, 53 Va. App. 578, 673 S.E.2d 913 (3/17/09).