Although it is not so as a matter of law, it will be a rare case where the child will not be adversely affected when a relocation of the custodial parent and child requires substantial alteration of a successful custody-visitation arrangement in which both parents have substantial contact with the child. To the extent, however, that a court can meaningfully control the custody of older children, courts or legislatures should not set a fixed age at which a child is given a near-absolute right to choose his custodial parent. Dissolution actions by their nature are a hindsight view of family economic relationships engaged in when the marriage was functioning as a cohesive and loving unit. We do not believe that hindsight view must be applied to such relationships in the same legalistic fashion that it would be to arm's length business transactions. Intrafamily activities are not, and should not be, conducted as if the parties were adversaries each interested in protecting his or her own interest.
Marriage is a personal partnership based upon love, trust and a mutuality of interest and benefit.
When it comes apart courts must assess the economic activities from the perspective of the parties as loving partners, not from the perspective of adversaries as they are at trial of the dissolution proceeding. Though if we consider marriages in the light of mere civil contracts, they do not seem to be properly of spiritual cognizance. But the Romanists having very early converted this contract into a holy sacramental ordinance, the church of course took it under her protection, upon the division, of the two jurisdictions and, in the hands of such able politicians, it soon be- came an engine of great importance to the papal scheme of an universal monarchy over Christendom. Yet, abstracted from this universal influence, which affords so good a reason for their conduct, one might otherwise be led to wonder, that the same authority, which enjoined the strictest celibacy to the priesthood, should think them the proper judges in causes between man and wife. These causes, indeed, partly from the nature of tbe injuries complained of, and partly from tbe clerical method of treating them, soon became too gross for the modesty of a lay tribunal.