More on Hawaii

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

Travel, custody and relocation in Hawaii

The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what Hawaii law and Hawaii’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 jurisdictionHaw. Rev. Stat. ch. 583A (§ 583A-101 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 noticeNo notice period No relocation statute; governed by case law.
Triggered byNot distance-based What turns a move into a legal event in Hawaii.
What do you need?
Which court decidesAbduction-prevention powersMovingWhat the standard order says…Who holds the passportWhat catches people out in HawaiiSources for this pageEvery state
8 sections on this page. Pick one, or show everything.
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
  1. Which court decides — and why a trip does not change it
  2. Abduction-prevention powers — Hawaii has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.
  3. Moving, and how much warning you owe — Governed by case law, not statute.
  4. What the standard order says about travel — Hawaii has no single statewide parenting order.
  5. Who holds the passport — Nothing in Hawaii’s statutes or standard forms addresses who holds the child’s passport.
  6. What catches people out in Hawaii
  7. Every state
In this subject 8

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

Hawaii custody jurisdiction sits under Haw. Rev. Stat. ch. 583A (§ 583A-101 et seq.) – “This chapter may be cited as the Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.” (HRS § 583A-101; L 2002, c 124, pt of § 2). The home-state definition is at Haw. Rev. Stat. § 583A-102, definition of “Home state”. Hawaii sets out its UCCJEA definitions alphabetically and unnumbered, so there is no subsection number to cite; the definition reads “the state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent for a period of at least six consecutive months immediately before the commencement of a child-custody proceeding.”. 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

Hawaii has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. Hawaii has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. The Hawaii Legislature’s own directory listing of the volume of the Hawaii Revised Statutes containing the family chapters (Vol. 12, chapters 501-588) contains chapters 571, 571D, 572, 572B-572D, 573-576, 576B, 576D, 576E, 577, 577A, 577D, 577E, 578-582, 582D, 583, 583A, 584, 584A, 585, 586, 586C, 587, 587A, 587D and 588 – the custody-jurisdiction chapters are 583 and 583A, and there is no chapter 583B or any other child-abduction-prevention act. Hawaii’s abduction-related tools are those built into the UCCJEA chapter itself (including the warrant to take physical custody of a child in HRS ch. 583A, part III) and the criminal law, not a UCAPA petition.

Moving, and how much warning you owe

Hawaii has no relocation statute. There is no Hawaii statutory relocation notice period, no mileage trigger, no petition procedure and no burden-shifting presumption. Relocation is decided under the general custody standard in Haw. Rev. Stat. § 571-46, “Criteria and procedure in awarding custody and visitation; best interest of the child,” as developed by Hawaii case law. The only two places relocation appears in the relevant statutes are incidental. First, HRS § 571-46(a)(9)(C) is a domestic-violence protection, not a relocation rule: “If a parent is absent or relocates because of an act of family violence by the other parent, the absence or relocation shall not be a factor that weighs against the parent in determining custody or visitation.” Second, HRS § 571-46.5(c)(6) lists “Relocation of parents” as one of the topics a detailed parenting plan MAY cover – a permissive drafting suggestion, not a legal trigger. Hawaii’s parenting-plan statute, HRS § 571-46.5, requires that “[f]or every action that includes a contested custody of children, both parties or both parents shall develop either a mutually agreed-upon general parenting plan or separate individually-desired parenting plan, and file the plan at the outset of the action.”

Governed by case law, not statute. Not asserted. Hawaii relocation doctrine is judge-made, but the Hawaii State Judiciary’s website (courts.state.hi.us) returned HTTP 403 throughout this check, so no Hawaii appellate decision could be read from an official court source and no case is named 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

Hawaii 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.

Hawaii has no statutory default possession schedule and no statutory default travel terms. The statutory frame is HRS § 571-46.5: a parenting plan is mandatory in every contested-custody action and must be filed at the outset; “[a] parenting plan may include a general outline relating to parental responsibilities and parenting time,” and “[a] detailed parenting plan may include, but is not limited to, provisions relating to: (1) Residential schedule; (2) Holiday, birthday, and vacation planning; (3) Parental decision-making and responsibility; (4) Breastfeeding, if applicable; (5) Information sharing and access; (6) Relocation of parents; (7) Telephone access and other means of communication; (8) Right of first refusal procedures; (9) Transportation; and (10) Methods for changing or enforcing the parenting plan and for resolving disputes.” Note that this list is permissive and topic-level only: “vacation planning” is named as a subject, but the statute prescribes no default number of vacation weeks, no advance-notice period, no itinerary requirement, no out-of-state or out-of-country travel rule and no passport provision. If the parties cannot agree, HRS § 571-46.5(d) lets the court order alternative dispute resolution and counseling, and develop and file a detailed parenting plan on a party’s request. Whether the Hawaii State Judiciary publishes a statewide parenting plan form, and what such a form says about travel, could not be determined, because courts.state.hi.us refused every request when we checked.

Who holds the passport

Nothing in Hawaii’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 Hawaii

Hawaii is a pure case-law relocation state. There is no HRS section a parent can point to for a notice period or a mileage threshold – anyone quoting a Hawaii relocation notice period is quoting something that does not exist in the statutes.
Because relocation is not statutory, the practical constraint in Hawaii is whatever the parenting plan itself says. HRS § 571-46.5(c)(6) invites the parties to write relocation terms into the plan, and a Hawaii plan that omits them leaves the issue entirely to the § 571-46 best-interest analysis after the fact.
HRS § 571-46.5(a) requires a parenting plan to be filed AT THE OUTSET of any contested-custody action, not at the end. That timing catches people out.
HRS § 571-46(a)(9)(C) is a shield, not a relocation rule: a parent who leaves or relocates because of the other parent’s family violence cannot have that absence or relocation held against them in the custody or visitation determination.
Hawaii’s UCCJEA definitions in HRS § 583A-102 are alphabetical and carry no subsection numbers, unlike most states’ (7). A citation in the form ‘HRS § 583A-102(7)’ is not how Hawaii’s section is structured.
Hawaii has no UCAPA. There is no dedicated abduction-prevention petition, no statutory travel-itinerary order, and no statutory passport-surrender remedy – a significant gap for a state where essentially all travel off-island is by air.
Both http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov and http://www.courts.state.hi.us returned HTTP 403 during this check; the Hawaii Revised Statutes were readable only through the legislature’s alternate host data.capitol.hawaii.gov. Anyone re-verifying this should expect the same and use that host.

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: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov returned HTTP 403 on all requests; the statutes were read instead from the Hawaii Legislature’s alternate host https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov, which serves the same hrscurrent tree.; http://www.courts.state.hi.us (Hawaii State Judiciary) returned HTTP 403 on all requests, so no Hawaii statewide court form and no Hawaii appellate decision could be consulted. For that reason this page names no Hawaii statewide parenting form and no Hawaii relocation case.

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.