Travel, custody and relocation in Alaska

The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what Alaska law and Alaska’s own court forms say about taking your child on a trip, moving, and who holds the passport between journeys.

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Read this alongside the federal rules

Getting a child’s passport, consent letters, the Hague Convention and what actually stops a departure are the same in all fifty states — they are on the main travel page. Start there, then come back here for the part that varies.

Custody jurisdictionAS 25.30.300 Which state’s court may decide custody — and why a holiday elsewhere does not move it.
Abduction Prevention ActNoThe court still has its own powers; it just has no uniform-act toolkit to draw on.
Relocation noticeNo notice period No relocation statute; governed by case law.
Triggered byNone. Alaska has no relocation statute, so there is… None. Alaska has no relocation statute, so there is no statutory mileage threshold and no out-of-state trigger

Which court decides — and why a trip does not change it

Alaska custody jurisdiction sits under AS 25.30.300 – 25.30.910 (Alaska Stat. tit. 25, ch. 30), “Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act” (AS 25.30.910, short title). The repealed 1977 UCCJA occupied AS 25.30.010 – 25.35.230 and is still shown in the chapter index as repealed by sec. 4 ch 133 SLA 1998.. The home-state definition is at AS 25.30.909(7). The practical point for travel is this: a child’s home state is where they lived for six consecutive months before a case started, and a temporary absence counts toward that period. A summer with grandparents in another state does not start a clock there, and it does not let the other parent file somewhere new.

Abduction-prevention powers

Alaska has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. A judge here still has general power to impose travel conditions, but there is no dedicated statutory menu of abduction-prevention measures to point to. If risk is a live issue, the federal route on the main travel page — a valid, enforceable order prohibiting removal, routed to CBP — matters more here, not less.

Moving, and how much warning you owe

Alaska has no parental-relocation statute and no statutory advance-notice period. A proposed move is handled as a motion to modify under AS 25.20.110(a): ‘An award of custody of a child or visitation with the child may be modified if the court determines that a change in circumstances requires the modification of the award and the modification is in the best interests of the child.’ The Alaska Court System’s own self-help materials describe the judge-made two-step test that follows: the court first asks whether the parent’s reason for moving is legitimate (i.e. not to deny the other parent contact – the court’s examples are ‘a better paying job, enrolling in a special education program, family support’), and then decides the child’s best interests considering the consequences both if the child moves and if the child stays.

Governed by case law, not statute. No Alaska Supreme Court relocation case is named here. The Alaska Court System self-help page states only that ‘The Alaska Supreme Court has issued many decisions about what types of circumstances amount to a change of circumstances allowing a modification’ without naming one, and no individual opinion was retrieved and read from a court site during this research.

Relocation and vacation are different questions, and orders often treat them in the same paragraph. A trip is temporary; a move changes the child’s residence. Read your own order for which one your plan actually is before you assume the relocation rule does not apply.

What the standard order says about travel

Alaska publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Joint Parenting Plan and Order, form SHC-1128 (Alaska Court System, rev. 7/25); companion Proposed Parenting Plan SHC-1127. These are statewide court-published fill-in templates, not a default schedule that applies by operation of law.. That matters, because its default wording is what lands in a lot of orders unchanged, and it is where your travel terms probably came from.

SHC-1128 has a dedicated travel architecture. Section on transportation covers who accompanies the children (‘The parent receiving the children is responsible for accompanying the children during travel’ / ‘Parent A [ ] Parent B [ ] Third Party ( ) will accompany the children during all travel, until age ___’ / ‘The children are old enough to travel by themselves’) and who pays for plane tickets. Paragraph (e), ‘Out-of-State and International Travel’, reads: ‘Parent A [ ] Parent B [ ] may travel [ ] out-of-state [ ] outside the United States with the children during their regular parenting time: [ ] without restrictions. [ ] with the following restrictions: ____’. It continues: ‘We will cooperate to obtain passports and necessary travel authorizations.’ and ‘The parent traveling with the children will make sure the children can communicate with the other parent during the travel as follows: ____’ and ‘_____ days before the trip starts, the traveling parent must give the other parent information detailed enough for the other parent to locate the children in the event of an emergency. This includes departure and return dates, as well as air travel and lodging arrangements. If flight or travel information changes, the traveling parent will tell the other parent as soon as possible.’ The form also has a ‘Summer Vacation’ block. The advance-notice figure is a BLANK the parties fill in – Alaska sets no statewide default number of days.

Who holds the passport

Not in statute – no Alaska statute reviewed here mentions passports, and Alaska has no UCAPA, so there is no statutory passport-surrender remedy or Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program direction. It IS addressed in the statewide form: SHC-1128 contains the check-box term ‘We will cooperate to obtain passports and necessary travel authorizations.’ That clause allocates cooperation only. It does not say who physically holds the child’s passport between trips, and it imposes no surrender obligation.

What catches people out in Alaska

Alaska has no relocation statute. Any source giving an Alaska notice period in days or a mileage trigger is wrong – the obligation, if any, comes from the parties’ own parenting plan, where SHC-1128 leaves the number blank.
Alaska’s UCCJEA definitions live at AS 25.30.909, near the END of the chapter, not at the front. AS 25.30.900 is a repealed definitions section that still appears in the index; citing 25.30.900 for definitions is citing a repealed provision.
The chapter index still lists ‘Secs. 25.30.010 – 25.35.230. Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act. [Repealed]’. Cite AS 25.30.300 et seq., never 25.30.010.
SHC-1128’s travel clause reaches BOTH out-of-state and out-of-country travel through the same check boxes, and the default when nothing is checked is silence, not permission. Parents who never fill in the days blank have no enforceable itinerary deadline.
The Alaska Legislature’s statutes site (akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp) renders section text only through JavaScript. Section text is reachable at https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp?media=print&secStart=X&secEnd=Y, which is what was used here.

Sources for this page

Sources we could not reach when this page was built, recorded so you know what is missing rather than assuming it was checked: https://www.uniformlaws.org – the UCAPA and UCCJEA committee pages render enactment tables only via JavaScript; no state-by-state enactment list could be read. UCAPA status was therefore determined from the Alaska Statutes title index instead.

Every fact above is taken from the source linked beside it. Where a figure could not be confirmed from an official source, this page says so rather than printing a plausible number. Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date.

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Sources last checked30 August 2026
Page published30 August 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.