Various aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communication. In some aspects, a master node (MN) may receive information indicating one or more candidate target secondary nodes (SNs) for a multi radio access technology dual connectivity (MR-DC) handover of a user equipment (UE), wherein the information indicates that the one or more candidate target SNs are associated with direct forwarding paths with a source radio access network (RAN) node of the UE; select a target SN from the one or more candidate target SNs based at least in part on the received information; and perform the MR-DC handover of the UE, wherein the selected target SN is different than the source RAN node of the UE, and wherein a configuration of the MR-DC handover is based at least in part on a direct forwarding path between the selected target SN and the source RAN node.