Travel, custody and relocation in Arkansas

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

See a different stateArkansas
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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 jurisdictionArk. Code Ann. secs. 9-19-101 to 9-19-401… 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. Arkansas has no relocation statute, so there… None. Arkansas has no relocation statute, so there is no statutory mileage threshold, no out-of-state trigger and no statutory notice period

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

Arkansas custody jurisdiction sits under Ark. Code Ann. secs. 9-19-101 to 9-19-401 (Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act). The home-state definition is at Ark. Code Ann. sec. 9-19-102 (Definitions). The exact subdivision number carrying ‘home state’ was not verified and is deliberately not asserted.. 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

Arkansas 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

Arkansas governs parental relocation entirely by CASE LAW. There is a presumption in favor of relocation, but only for a parent who is the true primary custodian, and it does not apply in joint-custody cases. The Arkansas Judiciary’s own appellate-update publication states the framework: ‘In determining whether a parent may relocate with a minor child, the trial court must generally look to the principles set forth in the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision in Hollandsworth and Singletary. In Hollandsworth the Arkansas Supreme Court announced a presumption in favor of relocation for custodial parents with sole or primary custody, with the noncustodial parent having the burden to rebut this presumption. Later in Singletary, the Arkansas Supreme Court explained that the Hollandsworth presumption does not apply when the parents share joint custody of a child. The analysis in a change-in-custody request due to the relocation of one parent in a joint-custody situation is the same as that when relocation is not involved; the court must first determine whether a material change in circumstances has transpired since the divorce decree or last order of custody and then whether the change in custody is in the best interest of the child. In Cooper v. Kalkwarf … the Supreme Court clarified that the Hollandsworth presumption should apply only when the parent seeking to relocate is not just labeled the “primary” custodian in the divorce decree but also spends significantly more time with the child than the other parent.’ The Domestic Relations Benchbook adds that ‘Relocation of a custodial parent and children is not, by itself, a material change in circumstances’ and that the moving parent ‘no longer has the obligation to prove a real advantage to parent and child when relocating.’

Governed by case law, not statute. Verified on arcourts.gov (Arkansas Judiciary). Hollandsworth v. Knyzewski, 353 Ark. 470 (2003); Singletary v. Singletary, 2013 Ark. 506 (2013); Cooper v. Kalkwarf, 2017 Ark. 331 (2017); applied in Baird v. Baird, 2022 Ark. App. 442. All four are named and described in the Arkansas Judiciary’s November 2022 Appellate Update and/or its Domestic Relations Benchbook.

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

Arkansas has no single statewide parenting order. Travel terms come from your own order and from local court rules, which vary by county or district. Read your order rather than a template.

Arkansas has no statewide standard parenting order, model parenting plan or default visitation schedule adopted by the Supreme Court of Arkansas. Nothing statewide prescribes vacation blocks, advance-notice periods, itineraries, out-of-state or out-of-country travel terms, or passport custody. Visitation schedules in Arkansas come from individual judicial circuits: the Arkansas Judiciary’s circuit-court area of arcourts.gov posts a ‘General Child Visitation Schedule’ PDF, but that is a circuit-level document, not a statewide instrument, and it is an image-only scan whose text could not be extracted here – so nothing from it is quoted or characterized.

Who holds the passport

Nothing in Arkansas’s statutes or standard forms addresses who holds the child’s passport. That is not a gap you have to live with — it is a clause you can ask for, and the federal rules above are the reason to.

What catches people out in Arkansas

Arkansas has no relocation statute. Any Arkansas notice period in days or mileage trigger is invented. Relocation is decided on the Hollandsworth / Singletary / Cooper line of Supreme Court cases.
The Hollandsworth presumption in favor of relocation is not a general Arkansas rule. Singletary removed it from joint-custody cases, and Cooper v. Kalkwarf narrowed it further: being labeled the ‘primary’ custodian in the decree is not enough – the parent must also spend significantly more time with the child. Baird v. Baird (2022 Ark. App. 442) reversed a circuit court for applying the presumption in an approximately 60/40 arrangement.
Where the presumption does not apply, the moving parent is in an ordinary change-of-custody posture: material change in circumstances first, then best interest.
Relocation by itself is not a material change in circumstances in Arkansas.
The UCCJEA in Arkansas applies to INTERSTATE disputes only. The Benchbook cites Seamans v. Seamans, 73 Ark. App. 27 (2001) for the point that a court has no authority to award attorney fees under the Act in a purely intrastate dispute.
Arkansas has no statewide parenting-time form, so travel, itinerary and passport terms exist only if the parties or the local circuit put them in. Circuit-level ‘general visitation schedules’ vary and are not state law.
Arkansas does not publish its Code as free full text on a state website. The citations above were taken from the Arkansas Judiciary’s own Benchbook rather than from the Code, which is why the ‘home state’ subdivision number is left unverified.

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: The official Arkansas Code full text is not freely published on arkleg.state.ar.us or arcourts.gov; only bills, acts and judiciary publications are. Statute text for Ark. Code Ann. secs. 9-19-101 et seq. could therefore not be read directly, and the UCCJEA citation above rests on the Arkansas Judiciary’s Domestic Relations Benchbook.; https://arcourts.gov/circuit/sites/default/files/general-child-visitation-schedule_0.pdf – image-only scan; no OCR available in this environment, so its contents are not reported.; https://www.uniformlaws.org – enactment tables render only via JavaScript, so UCAPA enactment status could not be confirmed against the ULC’s own list.

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.