Travel, custody and relocation in California

The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what California law and California’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 jurisdictionCal. Fam. Code, div. 8, pt. 3 (§ 3400 et seq.) 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 notice45 days Cal. Fam. Code § 7501 (parent’s right to change the child’s residence, codifying In re Marriage of Burgess) and Cal. Fam. Code § 3024 (change-of-residence notice). California has no mandatory statewide relocation-notice statute; § 3024 is permissive and the substantive standard is case law.
Triggered byNone. California’s notice provision is triggered by… None. California’s notice provision is triggered by DURATION of the change of residence (more than 30 days), not by mileage or by crossing a state line

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

California custody jurisdiction sits under Cal. Fam. Code, div. 8, pt. 3 (§ 3400 et seq.) – “This part may be cited as the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.” (Fam. Code § 3400). The home-state definition is at Cal. Fam. Code § 3402(g). 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

California has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. California has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. The expanded table of contents for Family Code Division 8 (Custody of Children, §§ 3000-3465) contains three parts – Definitions and General Provisions, Right to Custody of Minor Child, and the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act – and no abduction-prevention uniform act. California instead has its own home-grown abduction-prevention statute, Fam. Code § 3048, which pre-dates UCAPA and covers much of the same ground. Section 3048(a) is mandatory statewide: “in a proceeding to determine child custody or visitation with a child, every custody or visitation order shall contain” the basis for jurisdiction, the manner notice and opportunity to be heard were given, a clear description of each party’s custody and visitation rights, a statement that violation may bring civil or criminal penalties, and “[i]dentification of the country of habitual residence of the child or children.” Section 3048(b)(1) requires the court, on its own motion or a party’s request, to consider abduction-prevention measures whenever it becomes aware of facts indicating an abduction risk, weighing eight listed risk factors. Section 3048(b)(2) then authorizes: supervised visitation; a bond; restricting removal of the child from the county, the state or the country; restricting relocation absent advance notice and the other parent’s written agreement or court approval; “[r]equiring the surrender of passports and other travel documents”; prohibiting a parent from applying for a new or replacement passport for the child; requiring notification of a foreign consulate or embassy of passport restrictions with proof filed with the court; requiring registration of the California order in another state, or an identical order from another country, as a prerequisite to travel there; obtaining assurances of return from foreign visits by requiring the traveling parent to provide the court or the other parent with the child’s travel itinerary, copies of round-trip airline tickets, a list of addresses and telephone numbers where the child can be reached at all times, and an open airline ticket for the left-behind parent; provisions to facilitate use of the UCCJEA and the Hague Convention; and law-enforcement assistance.

Moving, and how much warning you owe

Cal. Fam. Code § 3024, in full: “In making an order for custody, if the court does not consider it inappropriate, the court may specify that a parent shall notify the other parent if the parent plans to change the residence of the child for more than 30 days, unless there is prior written agreement to the removal. The notice shall be given before the contemplated move, by mail, return receipt requested, postage prepaid, to the last known address of the parent to be notified. A copy of the notice shall also be sent to that parent’s counsel of record. To the extent feasible, the notice shall be provided within a minimum of 45 days before the proposed change of residence so as to allow time for mediation of a new agreement concerning custody. This section does not affect orders made before January 1, 1989.” Note the two soft edges: the court “may” specify the requirement (it is not automatic), and the 45 days applies only “[t]o the extent feasible.” The substantive right is in Fam. Code § 7501: “(a) A parent entitled to the custody of a child has a right to change the residence of the child, subject to the power of the court to restrain a removal that would prejudice the rights or welfare of the child. (b) It is the intent of the Legislature to affirm the decision in In re Marriage of Burgess (1996) 13 Cal.4th 25, and to declare that ruling to be the public policy and law of this state.”

Governed by case law, not statute. In re Marriage of Burgess (1996) 13 Cal.4th 25 is named in the text of Cal. Fam. Code § 7501(b) itself, which declares that ruling to be the public policy and law of California. That case name is therefore verified from the statute, not from a secondary source. No other California relocation case is asserted here.

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

California publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Judicial Council of California mandatory-use forms: FL-341 “Child Custody and Visitation (Parenting Time) Order Attachment” and its attachments, including FL-341(B) “Child Abduction Prevention Order Attachment” and FL-341(C) “Children’s Holiday Schedule Attachment”. These are statewide mandatory forms, but they are fill-in order attachments, not a default possession schedule.. 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.

California has no statewide DEFAULT parenting-time schedule – there is no California equivalent of a Standard Possession Order, and no statewide default number of vacation weeks or default advance-notice period for vacation travel. What is statewide is the form architecture. Form FL-341 item 12, “Travel with children,” lets the court order that a named party “must have written permission from the other parent or a court order to take the children out of” (a) “The state of California,” (b) named counties, or (c) other specified places – a checkbox, not a default. Item 13 sets the holiday schedule, optionally on form FL-341(C). Form FL-341(B), the mandatory-use Child Abduction Prevention Order Attachment adopted under Fam. Code § 3048, is where the travel-control detail lives: item 5 bars the named party from traveling with the children out of “this county,” “California,” “the United States” or another specified place; item 6 requires the party to register the order in a named state before the children may travel there for visits; item 7 bars applying for “a passport or any other vital document, such as a visa or birth certificate, that can be used for travel”; item 8 requires the party to “turn in all the children’s passports and other vital documents in the party’s possession or control,” with the form leaving blanks for the details of turning them in “to the court, one of the attorneys, the other party, or another person”; item 9 requires the party, before traveling with the children, to give the other parent “The children’s travel itinerary,” “Copies of round-trip airline tickets,” “Addresses and telephone numbers where the children can be reached at all times,” and “An open airline ticket for the other parent in case the children are not returned”; item 10 requires notifying a named embassy or consulate about the order with proof filed within a specified number of days; and item 11 requires obtaining a foreign custody order equivalent to the most recent U.S. order before the children may travel to that country. Every one of these is a checkbox that applies only after the court makes the item-1 abduction-risk finding – none is a default that applies to ordinary California custody orders.

Who holds the passport

Yes, in both statute and statewide mandatory form, but only as an abduction-risk remedy. Cal. Fam. Code § 3048(b)(2)(E) authorizes “[r]equiring the surrender of passports and other travel documents”; § 3048(b)(2)(F) authorizes “[p]rohibiting a parent from applying for a new or replacement passport for the child”; and § 3048(b)(2)(G) authorizes requiring a parent to notify a relevant foreign consulate or embassy of the passport restrictions and to file proof with the court. Judicial Council form FL-341(B) implements these at items 7, 8 and 10. California does not set a statewide default about which parent physically holds a child’s passport in an ordinary custody case – the surrender order is available only where the court has first found an abduction risk under the § 3048(b)(1) factors. Fam. Code § 3048(c) directs the Judicial Council to conform its child custody order forms to subdivision (b), which is why FL-341(B) exists.

What catches people out in California

Cal. Fam. Code § 3024 is permissive, not mandatory: the court ‘may specify’ the change-of-residence notice requirement ‘if the court does not consider it inappropriate.’ If the judgment does not contain a § 3024 notice provision, there is no statutory notice duty to enforce. Do not treat ’45 days’ as a California-wide rule.
Even where § 3024 is ordered, its 45-day figure is qualified – ‘To the extent feasible, the notice shall be provided within a minimum of 45 days.’ The hard requirement is only that notice be given before the move; 45 days is the aspiration.
California’s trigger is duration, not distance. A change of the child’s residence ‘for more than 30 days’ can trigger § 3024 notice even for a move across town, and a very long trip can look like a change of residence. There is no California mileage threshold at all.
Cal. Fam. Code § 3048(a) is genuinely statewide and mandatory: EVERY California custody or visitation order must identify the child’s country of habitual residence and recite the jurisdictional basis. This matters for later Hague Convention proceedings, and orders that omit it are defective.
Every passport, itinerary and travel-restriction tool in California is gated behind an abduction-risk finding. Form FL-341(B) item 1 requires the court to find a risk and to check at least one enumerated factor – and if the only factor checked is ‘family or emotional ties to another county, state, or foreign country’ (item 1.f), the form itself warns that at least one other factor must also be checked, mirroring Fam. Code § 3048(b)(1)(D).
Form FL-341 item 12 restricts taking the children out of California or out of named counties only if the box is checked and a party is named. Absent that, a California order does not by default stop a parent from taking the child out of state during their parenting time.
Fam. Code § 7501(b) does something unusual: it writes a case name into the statute, affirming In re Marriage of Burgess (1996) 13 Cal.4th 25 as the law of the state. So California relocation is statutory in its allocation of the right and case-law in its application – the statute expressly points back to the case law.
Fam. Code § 3048(d) preserves Penal Code § 278.7, so the abduction-prevention provisions do not displace the criminal-law safe-harbor for a parent fleeing domestic violence; and § 3048(b)(1)(F) tells the court to weigh whether apparent flight-planning is actually a domestic-violence safety plan.

Sources for this page

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.