More on Georgia

The rest of what we have written about Georgia. Every figure is quoted from Georgia’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.

Travel, custody and relocation in Georgia

The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what Georgia law and Georgia’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 jurisdictionO.C.G.A. tit. 19, ch. 9, art. 3 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 notice30 days O.C.G.A. sec. 19-9-3 carries Georgia’s relocation-notice requirement. A 2016 Georgia General Assembly bill (legis.ga.gov document 20152016/160301, adding O.C.G.A. sec. 19-9-143 on powers of attorney for minor children) refers twice to ‘any applicable relocation notice requirements under subsection (f) of Code Section 19-9-3’ – which is the Georgia Legislature’s own identification of where the relocation notice lives. The text of that subsection was not readable from this environment, so its wording is not quoted and the subsection letter is reported as the Legislature stated it rather than independently verified.
Triggered byNone identified. Georgia’s notice is tied to a… None identified. Georgia’s notice is tied to a CHANGE OF RESIDENCE, not to a distance or a state line. The statewide parenting plan form imposes it on ‘A parent changing residence’ with no mileage qualifier and no in-state/out-of-state distinction

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

Georgia custody jurisdiction sits under O.C.G.A. tit. 19, ch. 9, art. 3 – Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. CITATION not VERIFIED AGAINST A PRIMARY SOURCE: the section range commonly given is O.C.G.A. secs. 19-9-40 to 19-9-104, but that range could not be confirmed on a Georgia state website from this environment and is therefore reported as unverified rather than as a checked citation.. 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

Georgia 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

The 30 days is verified from the statewide judiciary form rather than from the Code. Uniform Superior Court Rule 24.10 sets out the parenting plan that ‘must at a minimum contain the information required by OCGA sec. 19-9-1 (b) and be presented in substantially the following form’, and that form’s section II.J, ‘Communication Provisions’, reads: ‘( ) Each parent shall promptly notify the other parent of a change of address, phone number or cell phone number. A parent changing residence must give at least 30 days notice of the change and provide the full address of the new residence. ( ) Due to prior acts of family violence, the address of the child(ren) and victim of family violence shall be kept confidential. The protected parent shall promptly notify the other parent, through a third party, of any change in contact information necessary to conduct visitation.’ Note that in the statewide form this appears as a CHECK BOX, not as unconditional text. Georgia also has no statutory relocation factor list of the kind Connecticut, Delaware and Minnesota have; the substantive relocation standard is judge-made best-interest analysis.

Governed by case law, not statute. No Georgia appellate case is named here. Georgia’s leading relocation decision is frequently cited in secondary sources, but no Georgia opinion was retrieved and read from gasupreme.us or gaappeals.us during this research, so none is asserted.

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

Georgia publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Parenting Plan prescribed by Uniform Superior Court Rule 24.10 (Uniform Rules of the Superior Courts of the State of Georgia), which reproduces the form in the rule itself. Georgia parenting plans are mandatory: O.C.G.A. sec. 19-9-1 requires one in permanent custody and modification actions, and the final decree must incorporate a permanent parenting plan.. 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.

Almost none – this is the striking thing about Georgia’s statewide form. USCR Rule 24.10 states: ‘In all cases involving permanent custody or custody modification (except when a parent seeks emergency relief for family violence), each parent shall prepare and submit a parenting plan, or the parties may jointly submit a parenting plan, as directed by the judge. The parenting plan should be tailored to fit the needs of each individual family but must at a minimum contain the information required by OCGA sec. 19-9-1 (b) and be presented in substantially the following form …’. The form then covers custody and decision making, a day-to-day schedule, holidays, and at F ‘Coordination of Parenting Schedules’, which addresses extended parenting time only as: ‘When the child(ren) is/are with a parent for an extended parenting time/visitation period (such as summer), the other parent shall be entitled to visit with the child(ren) during the extended period, as follows: ____’. Section G is Transportation Arrangements (exchange location, who transports at the start and end of visitation, allocation of transportation costs). Section H is Contacting the Child. Section J is the Communication Provisions quoted above with the 30-day change-of-residence notice. There is no vacation-travel notice clause, no itinerary requirement, no out-of-state travel clause, no out-of-country travel clause and no passport clause anywhere in the statewide Georgia parenting plan.

Who holds the passport

Nothing in Georgia’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 Georgia

Georgia’s 30-day notice is a CHANGE-OF-RESIDENCE notice, not a relocation-distance rule. It has no mileage trigger and no state-line trigger – moving across town triggers it exactly as moving across the country does.
In the statewide Rule 24.10 parenting plan the 30-day notice sits behind a CHECK BOX in section II.J. Whether it is unconditional as a matter of O.C.G.A. sec. 19-9-3 we could not verified from this environment; do not assume an unchecked Georgia parenting plan carries the duty.
The Georgia Legislature’s own 2016 bill language locates the relocation notice at ‘subsection (f) of Code Section 19-9-3’. That is the best primary pointer available here, but the subsection text itself was not readable, so the subsection letter should be confirmed against a current O.C.G.A. before it is relied on in a filing.
Georgia parenting plans are MANDATORY and must be incorporated into the final decree – O.C.G.A. sec. 19-9-1 requires them for permanent custody and modification actions, and USCR 24.10 requires each parent to submit one.
The statewide Georgia parenting plan has no travel machinery at all. No vacation notice, no itinerary, no out-of-state clause, no international clause, no passport clause. A Georgia order that simply adopts the Rule 24.10 form gives a parent nothing to enforce about a trip.
Georgia has no statutory relocation factor list. Do not import Connecticut-style or Delaware-style factors – Georgia’s substantive test is best-interest analysis developed by its appellate courts.
Georgia does not publish the O.C.G.A. as free full text on a state website. legis.ga.gov serves a JavaScript shell to automated clients and its archive fulltext URLs return the same shell. Anyone verifying a Georgia code citation needs a commercial or library copy of the Code.

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.legis.ga.gov – the Georgia General Assembly site is a JavaScript single-page application; both the code portal and the /Legislation/Archives/…/fulltext/ bill URLs return a 1,492-byte SPA shell to automated clients. Individual bill PDFs under /api/legislation/document/ ARE readable and were used, but the O.C.G.A. itself is not published there as free full text.; The Official Code of Georgia Annotated is hosted on a commercial platform, so no primary state source was available for the UCCJEA citation, the ‘home state’ definition, the text of O.C.G.A. sec. 19-9-3, or a code-level UCAPA search.; https://www.uniformlaws.org – enactment tables render only via JavaScript.

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.