Travel, custody and relocation in Connecticut

The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what Connecticut law and Connecticut’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 jurisdictionConn. Gen. Stat. ch. 815p, secs. 46b-115 to… 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 Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 46b-56d (P.A. 06-168), ‘Relocation of parent with minor child. Burden of proof. Factors considered by court.’
Triggered byNone. The trigger is qualitative, not geographic the statute applies to a relocation ‘where such relocation would have a significant impact on an existing parenting plan’. There is no mileage threshold and no out-of-state requirement.

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

Connecticut custody jurisdiction sits under Conn. Gen. Stat. ch. 815p, secs. 46b-115 to 46b-115jj (Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act), P.A. 99-185, effective July 1, 2000. The home-state definition is at Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 46b-115a(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

Connecticut 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

‘(a) In any proceeding before the Superior Court arising after the entry of a judgment awarding custody of a minor child and involving the relocation of either parent with the child, where such relocation would have a significant impact on an existing parenting plan, the relocating parent shall bear the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that (1) the relocation is for a legitimate purpose, (2) the proposed location is reasonable in light of such purpose, and (3) the relocation is in the best interests of the child. (b) In determining whether to approve the relocation of the child under subsection (a) of this section, the court shall consider, but such consideration shall not be limited to: (1) Each parent’s reasons for seeking or opposing the relocation; (2) the quality of the relationships between the child and each parent; (3) the impact of the relocation on the quantity and the quality of the child’s future contact with the nonrelocating parent; (4) the degree to which the relocating parent’s and the child’s life may be enhanced economically, emotionally and educationally by the relocation; and (5) the feasibility of preserving the relationship between the nonrelocating parent and the child through suitable visitation arrangements.’ The statute imposes no advance-notice obligation of any length.

Governed by case law, not statute. The annotations printed with the statute on the Connecticut General Assembly’s own site record, without naming the cases, that there is ‘No indication legislature intended to apply section to relocation matters resolved at time of initial judgment for dissolution of marriage, which continue to be governed by best interest of child standard in Sec. 46b-56. 113 CA 177.’ Individual opinions were not retrieved from a court site, so no case name 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

Connecticut publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Custody Agreement and Parenting Plan, form JD-FM-284 (Connecticut Judicial Branch, Rev. 9-21) – the statewide fill-in agreement/order. The related Proposed Parental Responsibility Plan, JD-FM-199 (Rev. 1-26, C.G.S. sec. 46b-56a, Practice Book Rule 25-30), is the contested-case pleading and is all blank narrative fields with no travel content.. 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.

JD-FM-284 section B.7 is headed ‘Travel: (Select all that apply)’ and offers two check-box terms: ‘A parent who travels overnight outside of Connecticut with the child(ren) will keep the other parent informed of the travel plans, including transportation information and address(es), and telephone number(s) at which the traveling parent and child(ren) may be reached.’ and ‘Neither parent will travel with the child(ren) outside of Connecticut for longer than ____ days at a time without the prior written consent of the other parent or an order of the court.’ Section B.5 ‘Summer Vacation’ provides: ‘Each parent is entitled to ____ week(s) of summer vacation with the child(ren) and will work out the details of summer vacation by (date) ____ of each year’ and a may/may-not-be-consecutive election. Both travel terms are OPTIONAL check boxes, the out-of-state day limit is a blank, and there is no advance-notice period expressed in days anywhere on the form. The form contains no out-of-country travel clause and no passport clause.

Who holds the passport

Nothing in Connecticut’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 Connecticut

Sec. 46b-56d is POST-JUDGMENT only. It applies ‘in any proceeding before the Superior Court arising after the entry of a judgment awarding custody’. Relocation raised at the initial dissolution judgment is governed by the ordinary best-interest standard of sec. 46b-56, not by the three-part 46b-56d burden. The Connecticut General Assembly prints an annotation to this effect with the statute.
Connecticut has no relocation notice period. There are no days. The statute is a burden-of-proof rule, not a notice rule.
Connecticut has no mileage trigger either. The gate is ‘significant impact on an existing parenting plan’, so a short move that wrecks a midweek schedule can be inside the statute while a longer move that does not can be outside it.
On JD-FM-284 the travel provisions are check boxes, not defaults. If neither box is checked, Connecticut’s statewide parenting plan says nothing at all about travel – and the out-of-state duration cap is a blank the parties must fill in.
JD-FM-284’s travel clause is framed around leaving CONNECTICUT, not around leaving the country. There is no separate international-travel term and no passport custodian provision anywhere in the statewide form.
cga.ct.gov serves an incomplete TLS chain (it omits the Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority – G2 intermediate), so many HTTP clients fail certificate verification against it even though the site is legitimate.

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 – enactment tables render only via JavaScript; UCAPA status was determined from the Connecticut Title 46b chapter 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.