Travel, custody and relocation in New Jersey

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

See a different stateNew Jersey
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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 jurisdictionN.J.S.A. 2A:34-53 to 2A:34-95 (Uniform Child… 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 N.J.S.A. 9:2-2 (R.S. 9:2-2), the removal statute — but note that it is a consent-or-cause statute with no notice period and no distance test
Triggered byOut of the jurisdiction of New Jersey the state line, not a mileage figure. And the statute reaches only children who ‘are natives of this State, or have resided five years within its limits.’ An intrastate move, however far, is not governed by N.J.S.A. 9:2-2 at all.

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

New Jersey custody jurisdiction sits under N.J.S.A. 2A:34-53 to 2A:34-95 (Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act), enacted by P.L. 2004, c.147 (Senate Committee Substitute for S150), approved September 14, 2004. The home-state definition is at N.J.S.A. 2A:34-54 (§ 2 of P.L. 2004, c.147, Definitions): “‘Home state’ means the state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent for at least six consecutive months immediately before the commencement of a child custody proceeding. In the case of a child less than six months of age, the term means the state in which the child lived from birth with any of the persons mentioned. A period of temporary absence of any of the mentioned persons is part of the period.”. 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

New Jersey 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

R.S. 9:2-2, in the text carried by the New Jersey Legislature’s own bill drafting as the current statute: ‘When the Superior Court has jurisdiction over the custody and maintenance of the minor children of parents divorced, separated or living separate, and such children are natives of this State, or have resided five years within its limits, they shall not be removed out of its jurisdiction against their own consent, if of suitable age to signify the same, nor while under that age without the consent of both parents, unless the court, upon cause shown, shall otherwise order. The court, upon application of any person in behalf of such minors, may require such security and issue such writs and processes as shall be deemed proper to effect the purposes of this section.’ (cf: P.L.1948, c.321, s.2.) Note what the statute does not do: it sets no notice period, prescribes no procedure, lists no factors, and defines no burden of proof. It says only that a covered child may not be removed from New Jersey without both parents’ consent — or the child’s own consent, if the child is of suitable age — unless the court orders otherwise ‘upon cause shown.’ The entire content of New Jersey relocation law is the judicial gloss on the words ‘upon cause shown.’

Governed by case law, not statute. The governing authority is Bisbing v. Bisbing (Jaime Taormina Bisbing v. Glenn R. Bisbing, III), Supreme Court of New Jersey, No. A-2-16 (077533), argued March 29, 2017, decided August 8, 2017, reported at 230 N.J. 309. Verified from the opinion PDF on the New Jersey Judiciary’s own site. The Court held that ‘courts should conduct a best interests analysis to determine “cause” under N.J.S.A. 9:2-2 in all contested relocation disputes in which the parents share legal custody.’ In doing so it ABANDONED the prior standard of Baures v. Lewis, under which a parent of primary residence needed only to show good faith and that the move would not be ‘inimical to the child’s interests.’ A best-interests analysis under N.J.S.A. 9:2-4 now applies to relocation in shared-legal-custody cases. Bills have been introduced to codify the old Baures factors into R.S. 9:2-2 (for example S381 of 2010, which would have written the good-faith/not-inimical test and its factor list into the statute); none of them was enacted, which is itself confirmation that the statute remains the bare 1948 text.

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

New Jersey 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.

New Jersey has no statewide default. ‘Parenting Time: A Child’s Right’ expressly does not present a sample schedule with designated days and times; it offers general principles, saying a plan ‘should fit with your schedule and with that of your children, including after school activities, summer months, holidays and family obligations,’ notes that changes in distance between the parents’ homes may require adjustment, and tells a parent facing an out-of-state move to consult an attorney. It contains no advance-notice-before-travel provision, no itinerary requirement, no out-of-state or out-of-country travel clause, and no passport provision. Because the Judiciary supplies no model schedule, what a New Jersey order says about vacation travel, notice, itineraries, international travel and passports is entirely a product of the parties’ plan under R. 5:8-5 or the individual judge’s order. County vicinages and individual judges circulate their own parenting-time guidelines; those are local, not statewide.

Who holds the passport

Nothing in New Jersey’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 New Jersey

New Jersey’s relocation statute has no notice period. R.S. 9:2-2 requires CONSENT of both parents (or a court order ‘upon cause shown’), not advance notice. Any source that gives New Jersey a number of days is inventing it.
Bisbing v. Bisbing, 230 N.J. 309 (2017), changed the governing test and a great deal of pre-2017 material is now wrong. The Baures v. Lewis ‘good faith / not inimical to the child’s interests’ standard for a parent of primary residence is GONE; contested relocation where the parents share legal custody is now decided on a best-interests analysis to determine ’cause’ under N.J.S.A. 9:2-2.
R.S. 9:2-2 covers only children who ‘are natives of this State, or have resided five years within its limits.’ A family that moved to New Jersey three years ago with a child born elsewhere is outside the statute’s terms — a real and often-overlooked threshold.
The statute is about leaving NEW JERSEY, not about distance. A move from Cape May to High Point, roughly the length of the state, is not a removal under R.S. 9:2-2; a move a few miles across the Delaware or the Hudson is. There is no mileage trigger to quote.
R.S. 9:2-2 gives the CHILD a voice on its face: removal may not occur ‘against their own consent, if of suitable age to signify the same.’ That is unusual statutory language and is easy to miss.
The statute prescribes no procedure, no factors and no burden. Everything operative in New Jersey relocation law is judicial gloss on the phrase ‘upon cause shown.’ Do not present the statute as if it contained a test.
New Jersey publishes no statewide model parenting order or parenting plan form. Vicinage and judge-specific parenting-time guidelines circulate widely and are sometimes mistaken for statewide rules. They are not.
Nothing statewide in New Jersey addresses travel notice, itineraries, out-of-country travel or passports. If the order does not say it, there is no default to fall back on.
New Jersey has not enacted UCAPA. The abduction remedy is criminal (N.J.S.A. 2C:13-4, interference with custody), which does nothing preventively; the only preventive statutory hook is the security-and-writs clause at the end of R.S. 9:2-2.

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.njcourts.gov/attorneys/rules-of-court/custody-and-parenting-timevisitation-plans-recital-judgment-or-order – HTTP 403 to a rendering fetch and returned no rule text to a scripted client. R. 5:8-5’s title is taken from the Judiciary’s own URL and page listing; its text is not quoted here because it we could not read, and no content is attributed to it beyond the existence of a plan requirement.; https://www.njcourts.gov/system/files/court-opinions/2017/a_2_16.pdf – HTTP 403 to a scripted client; the Bisbing opinion was read through a rendering fetch of the same official njcourts.gov URL.

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.