Travel, custody and relocation in Michigan

Michigan custody jurisdiction sits under MCL 722.1101 – 722.1406 (Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, 2001 PA 195, eff. Apr. 1, 2002). Article 1 General Provisions 722.1101-722.1112; Article 2 Jurisdiction 722.1201-722.1210; Article 3 Enforcement 722.1301-722.1316; Article 4 Miscellaneous 722.1401-722.1406.. The home-state definition is at MCL 722.1102(g). 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.

Michigan has enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act at MCL 722.1521 – 722.1532 (Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act, 2014 PA 460, imd. eff. Jan. 12, 2015). MCL 722.1528(2) requires the court, on finding a credible risk of abduction, to enter an abduction prevention order containing measures ‘reasonably calculated to prevent abduction of the child’. MCL 722.1528(3) lists them: (a) travel restrictions requiring a party traveling with the child outside a designated geographic area to provide the other party with ‘(i) The travel itinerary of the child. (ii) A list of physical addresses and telephone numbers at which the child can be reached at specified times. (iii) Copies of all travel documents.’; (b) prohibitions on removing the child ‘from this state, the United States, or another geographic area without permission of the court or the petitioner’s written consent’, on removing or retaining the child in violation of a custody determination, on removing the child from school or child care, and on approaching the child outside a supervised-visitation site; (c) a requirement to register the order in another state before the child may travel there; (d) passport measures – ‘(i) A direction that the petitioner place the child’s name in the United States department of state’s child passport issuance alert program. (ii) 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. (iii) A requirement that the respondent surrender … his or her enhanced driver license or enhanced official state personal identification card issued in the child’s name. (iv) A prohibition on the respondent applying on behalf of the child for a new or replacement passport or visa.’; (e) prerequisites to exercising custody or visitation, including filing an authenticated copy of the order with the U.S. State Department Office of Children’s Issues and the relevant foreign consulate, proof of registration with the U.S. embassy and the Hague central authority, and a Privacy Act waiver; and (f) on request, obtaining a mirror order in the foreign country. MCL 722.1528(4) allows supervised visitation, a bond ‘sufficient to serve as a financial deterrent to abduction’, and mandatory education. MCL 722.1529 provides an ex parte warrant to take physical custody of the child where wrongful removal is imminent.

MCL 722.31(1): ‘A child whose parental custody is governed by court order has, for the purposes of this section, a legal residence with each parent. Except as otherwise provided in this section, a parent of a child whose custody is governed by court order shall not change a legal residence of the child to a location that is more than 100 miles from the child’s legal residence at the time of the commencement of the action in which the order is issued.’ (2): ‘A parent’s change of a child’s legal residence is not restricted by subsection (1) if the other parent consents to, or if the court, after complying with subsection (4), permits, the residence change. This section does not apply if the order governing the child’s custody grants sole legal custody to 1 of the child’s parents.’ (3): ‘This section does not apply if, at the time of the commencement of the action in which the custody order is issued, the child’s 2 residences were more than 100 miles apart. This section does not apply if the legal residence change results in the child’s 2 legal residences being closer to each other than before the change.’ (4) sets five factors the court must weigh, ‘with the child as the primary focus’: quality-of-life improvement for child and relocating parent; each parent’s compliance with and use of parenting time and whether the move is ‘inspired by that parent’s desire to defeat or frustrate the parenting time schedule’; whether parenting time can be modified to preserve the relationship and whether each parent will comply; whether the objecting parent is motivated by child-support advantage; and domestic violence ‘regardless of whether the violence was directed against or witnessed by the child’. (5) requires every custody or parenting-time order to state the parents’ agreement on how a residence change will be handled, and if they do not agree the court must insert: ‘A parent whose custody or parenting time of a child is governed by this order shall not change the legal residence of the child except in compliance with section 11 of the “Child Custody Act of 1970”, 1970 PA 91, MCL 722.31.’ (6) lets a parent fleeing domestic violence move with the child to a safe location pending the court’s determination.

Governed by case law, not statute. The Michigan Judicial Institute’s own ‘Changing Child’s Legal Residence (100-Mile Rule) Checklist’ cites Brecht v Hendry, 297 Mich App 732 (2012) for the point that MCR 3.211(C)(1) applies even where MCL 722.31 does not, and Sulaica v Rometty, 308 Mich App 568 (2014) for the requirement that the court also consider whether the move alters the established custodial environment. Both were read on courts.michigan.gov.

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.

Michigan publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Two statewide instruments: (1) SCAO-approved form FOC 89, ‘Order Regarding Custody and Parenting Time’ (rev. 3/23) – a mandatory statewide order form with fixed boilerplate; and (2) the ‘Michigan Parenting Time Guideline’ published by the State Court Administrative Office Friend of the Court Bureau – advisory, not a default order. 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.

FOC 89 carries three hard statewide clauses. Item 8: ‘Unless otherwise agreed, a parent whose custody or parenting time of a child is governed by this order shall not change the legal residence of the child except in compliance with MCL 722.31.’ Item 11: ‘The parent with primary physical custody shall notify the friend of the court in writing whenever the address of a minor child changes. The domicile of the minor child may not be moved from the State of Michigan without prior approval of the court.’ Item 13: ‘Except as provided in item 14, neither parent shall exercise parenting time in a foreign country/nation that is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.’ Item 14 is the escape hatch: ‘Based on written agreement of the parties, ____ may exercise parenting time in ____, which is not a party to the Hague Convention …’. The Parenting Time Guideline is advisory and does not set a default. Under ‘Traveling During Parenting Time’ it says: ‘Parents may want to establish standard expectations for traveling with the child during parenting time. Many families decide on a certain amount of notice that the traveling parent must give the other parent before taking a trip with the child. For example, some families might include in their court order that each parent should give the other parent at least 30 days written notice before any travel. The written notice should include the location(s) and how to reach the child and parent.’ Its do/don’t list also says parents should ‘Inform the other parent of vacation travel dates, locations, and return times.’ Its ‘Extended Parenting Time’ section gives the example ‘Each year, each parent may spend four weeks of uninterrupted summer parenting time with the child.’ Neither the Guideline nor FOC 89 mentions passports.

Yes, and unusually strongly – through UCAPA. MCL 722.1528(3)(d) authorizes a court, on a finding of credible risk of abduction, to direct the petitioner to enroll the child in the U.S. State Department’s Child Passport Issuance Alert Program, to require the respondent to surrender to the court or the petitioner’s attorney any U.S. or foreign passport issued in the child’s name ‘including a passport issued in the name of both the parent and the child’, to require surrender of an enhanced driver license or enhanced state ID issued in the child’s name, and to prohibit the respondent from applying for a new or replacement passport or visa for the child. Separately, MCL 722.27a(10) makes a non-Hague-country restriction the statutory default in every parenting-time order: ‘Except as provided in this subsection, a parenting time order shall contain a prohibition on exercising parenting time in a country that is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. This subsection does not apply if both parents provide the court with written consent …’. Note the limits: neither provision says who holds the child’s passport in an ordinary, no-abduction-risk case, and the routine statewide order form FOC 89 contains no passport clause.

• Custody jurisdiction statute: https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-722-1102
• Abduction Prevention Act: https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-722-1528
• Relocation rule: https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-722-31
• Statewide parenting form: https://www.courts.michigan.gov/siteassets/forms/scao-approved/foc89.pdf
• Passport provisions: https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-722-27a

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.legislature.mi.gov – initially failed TLS verification (incomplete certificate chain). Resolved as described in the last gotcha; the site was ultimately read successfully, so no Michigan fact here is unverified.; https://www.uniformlaws.org – enactment tables render only via JavaScript; UCAPA status was determined from the MCL chapter 722 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.