Travel, custody and relocation in Kansas

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

See a different stateKansas
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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 jurisdictionK.S.A. ch. 23, art. 37 (K.S.A. 23-37,101 et… Which state’s court may decide custody — and why a holiday elsewhere does not move it.
Abduction Prevention ActYesK.S.A. ch. 23, art. 38 (K.S.A. 23-3801 through 23-3812) — ‘Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (UCAPA)’
Relocation notice30 days K.S.A. 23-3222 — ‘Change in child’s residence; notice; effect; exceptions’
Triggered byNone. Any change of the child’s residence triggers… None. Any change of the child’s residence triggers the notice duty, regardless of distance. A separate trigger applies to removing the child from Kansas for more than 90 days

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

Kansas custody jurisdiction sits under K.S.A. ch. 23, art. 37 (K.S.A. 23-37,101 et seq.) — ‘Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA)’. The home-state definition is at K.S.A. 23-37,102 (definitions; ‘home state’). 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

Kansas has enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act at K.S.A. ch. 23, art. 38 (K.S.A. 23-3801 through 23-3812) — ‘Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (UCAPA)’. On finding a credible risk of abduction the court may enter an abduction prevention order (23-3808) that: imposes travel restrictions requiring a party traveling with the child outside a designated geographical area to provide the other party with ‘the travel itinerary of the child’ and ‘copies of all travel documents’; requires a party to register the order in another state before the child may travel there; and, as to the child’s passport, directs the petitioner to place the child’s name in the U.S. Department of State’s Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program, requires the respondent to ‘surrender to the court or the petitioner’s attorney any United States or foreign passport issued in the child’s name, including a passport issued in the name of both the parent and the child,’ and prohibits the respondent from applying for a new or replacement passport or visa for the child. The court may also send an authenticated copy of the passport/travel-restriction order to the U.S. State Department Office of Children’s Issues and the relevant foreign consulate or embassy, and may require a bond or other security sufficient to deter abduction and fund recovery.

Moving, and how much warning you owe

‘(a) Except as provided in subsection (d), a parent entitled to legal custody or residency of or parenting time with a child under this article shall give written notice to the other parent not less than 30 days prior to: (1) Changing the residence of the child; or (2) removing the child from this state for a period of time exceeding 90 days. Such notice shall be sent by restricted mail, return receipt requested, to the last known address of the other parent. (b) Failure to give notice as required by subsection (a) is an indirect civil contempt punishable as provided by law. In addition, the court may assess, against the parent required to give notice, reasonable attorney fees and any other expenses incurred by the other parent by reason of the failure to give notice. (c) A change of the residence or the removal of a child as described in subsection (a) may be considered a material change of circumstances which justifies modification of a prior order of legal custody, residency, child support or parenting time.’

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

Kansas 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.

K.S.A. 23-3213(b) requires a permanent parenting plan to set out, at minimum, ‘a schedule for the child’s time with each parent, when appropriate,’ among other minimum provisions, and 23-3213(a)(4) states an objective of the plan is to ‘set forth an appropriate schedule of parenting time.’ The statute does not prescribe vacation blocks, advance-notice periods, itinerary exchange, out-of-state or out-of-country travel terms, or passport custody. The only statewide default travel-adjacent rule in Kansas is the K.S.A. 23-3222 notice duty (30 days before changing the child’s residence or removing the child from Kansas for more than 90 days) — and the statutory abduction-prevention measures in K.S.A. 23-3808, which apply only on a finding of credible abduction risk.

Who holds the passport

Addressed in the UCAPA, K.S.A. 23-3808(4): the court may direct the petitioner to enroll the child in the U.S. State Department’s Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program, require the respondent to surrender any U.S. or foreign passport issued in the child’s name (including a joint parent-and-child passport) to the court or the petitioner’s attorney, and prohibit the respondent from applying for a new or replacement passport or visa for the child. These are available only on a petition and a finding of credible risk of abduction — there is no default passport rule in an ordinary Kansas parenting order.

What catches people out in Kansas

Kansas has BOTH the UCCJEA (ch. 23, art. 37) and the UCAPA (ch. 23, art. 38). The two are adjacent articles of the same chapter and are easy to confuse in a cite; art. 37 uses the unusual comma-form section numbers (23-37,101), art. 38 does not (23-3801).
K.S.A. 23-3222 has no mileage trigger at all — moving the child across town requires the same 30-day written notice as moving to another state. The 90-day figure in the statute is about removing the child from Kansas temporarily, not about the length of a move.
Notice under 23-3222 must go by RESTRICTED mail, return receipt requested — not ordinary certified mail, not email. Failure is indirect civil contempt plus fees.
There is a victim exception: under 23-3222(d) no notice is owed to a parent convicted of an enumerated crime in which the child was the victim.
Kansas has no statewide parenting-time schedule, so ‘the Kansas standard order’ does not exist. Several judicial districts publish their own local guidelines; those are county-level, not statewide.

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.kscourts.gov/Public/Court-Forms — HTTP 403 to automated requests; the Kansas Judicial Branch forms library could not be checked for a statewide parenting-plan form

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.