Travel, custody and relocation in Louisiana

Louisiana custody jurisdiction sits under La. R.S. 13:1801 et seq. (Title 13, Chapter 6, Part IV — Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act). The home-state definition is at La. R.S. 13:1802(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.

Louisiana has enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act at La. R.S. 13:1851 et seq. (Title 13, Part V — Uniform INTERNATIONAL Child Abduction Prevention Act), Acts 2007, No. 369. R.S. 13:1858 lets the court order abduction-prevention measures including: travel restrictions requiring a party traveling with the child outside the territorial limits of the United States to provide the other party with ‘the travel itinerary of the child’ and ‘copies of all travel documents’; as to the child’s passport, a direction that the petitioner place the child’s name in the U.S. Department of State Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program, a requirement that the respondent ‘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 a prohibition on applying for a new or replacement passport or visa for the child; transmission of 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 a bond or other security sufficient to deter abduction and to fund recovery costs and fees. R.S. 13:1857 sets the risk factors and R.S. 13:1861 is the uniformity-of-construction section.

R.S. 9:355.1(2): “’Relocation’ means a change in the principal residence of a child for a period of sixty days or more, but does not include a temporary absence from the principal residence.” R.S. 9:355.2(A): the Subpart applies when ‘(1) There is intent to establish the principal residence of a child at any location outside this state. (2) There is no court order awarding custody and there is an intent to establish the principal residence of a child at any location within this state that is at a distance of more than seventy-five miles from the domicile of the other parent. (3) There is a court order awarding custody and there is an intent to establish the principal residence of a child at any location within this state that is at a distance of more than seventy-five miles from the principal residence of the child at the time that the most recent custody decree was rendered. (4) If either no principal residence of a child has been designated by the court or the parties have equal physical custody, and there is an intent to establish the principal residence of a child at any location within this state that is at a distance of more than seventy-five miles from the domicile of a person entitled to object to relocation.’ R.S. 9:355.5(A): notice ‘shall be given by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, or delivered by commercial courier … no later than any of the following: (1) The sixtieth day before the date of the proposed relocation. (2) The tenth day after the date that the person proposing relocation knows the information required … if the person did not know and could not reasonably have known the information in sufficient time to provide the sixty-day notice.’ The notice must include the mailing address, the intended new residence and mailing address, phone numbers, the date of the proposed relocation, reasons, a proposed revised custody/visitation schedule, and a statement that an objection must be made in writing by registered or certified mail within thirty days of receipt.

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.

Louisiana 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.

We could not read the form’s travel terms from an official source, so we are not describing them.

La. R.S. 13:1858(3): the court may direct the petitioner to place the child’s name in the U.S. Department of State Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program, require the respondent to surrender to the court or petitioner’s attorney any U.S. or foreign passport issued in the child’s name (including one issued jointly in the parent’s and child’s names), and prohibit the respondent from applying on the child’s behalf for a new or replacement passport or visa. Available only on a petition under the abduction-prevention Part; there is no default passport rule in an ordinary Louisiana custody order.

• Custody jurisdiction statute: https://legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=408556
• Abduction Prevention Act: https://legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=451784
• Relocation rule: https://legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=107654

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.