Travel, custody and relocation in Oregon

Oregon custody jurisdiction sits under ORS 109.701 to 109.834, “Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act” (Or. Laws 1999, ch. 649). Note the ORS annotation: “109.701 to 109.834 were enacted into law by the Legislative Assembly but were not added to or made a part of ORS chapter 109 or any series therein by legislative action.”. The home-state definition is at ORS 109.704(7) – “‘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, ‘home state’ means the state in which the child lived from birth with any of the persons mentioned. Any 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.

Oregon has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. Oregon has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. It does not appear among the 21 enacting jurisdictions in the Uniform Law Commission’s own enactment data, and there is no UCAPA series in the Oregon Revised Statutes. Oregon therefore has no statutory abduction-prevention order with the standard itinerary / travel-document / passport-surrender menu; a parent worried about abduction must seek relief through the ordinary custody and parenting-time provisions of ORS chapter 107 or through ORS 109.751 to 109.771 (the UCCJEA’s enforcement and warrant-to-take-physical-custody provisions).

ORS 107.159(1): “In any court order or judgment granting custody of a minor child and parenting time or visitation rights relating to the child, except for an order under ORS 107.700 to 107.735, the court shall include in its order a provision requiring that neither parent may move to a residence more than 60 miles further distant from the other parent without giving the other parent reasonable notice of the change of residence and providing a copy of such notice to the court.” Subsection (2): “Notwithstanding subsection (1) of this section, a parent is not required to give notice of a change of residence if the court, upon ex parte or other motion of the parent and for good cause, enters an order suspending the requirement.” The statute says “reasonable notice” and fixes no number of days. It also does not create a veto, an objection period, or a burden of proof – it is a notice provision only; the merits of a contested move are decided as a modification of the parenting plan under the best-interests standard. ORS 107.102(3)(f) separately lists “[r]elocation of parents” as a subject a detailed parenting plan may address, which is how most Oregon judgments get an actual notice deadline.

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.

Oregon publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Oregon Judicial Department statewide “Basic Parenting Plan (Exhibit 1)” form and its companion Basic Parenting Plan Guide (form rev. 6/2008), together with the OJD Safety Focused Parenting Plan Guide. Oregon has no default possession schedule that applies automatically; ORS 107.102(1) instead requires that a parenting plan “be developed and filed with the court” in every parenting-time case, and ORS 107.102(5)(a) requires the court to develop a detailed plan if a parent asks or if the parents cannot agree. 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.

The statewide form is a fill-in plan, not a set of default travel terms. Its vacation option reads: “We will follow our weekday and weekend schedule during the summer, except that each parent shall have the opportunity to spend ___ weeks of uninterrupted vacation time with the children each summer. We will confirm our vacation schedules in writing by the end of ______ each year.” Its moving paragraph tracks ORS 107.159 and leaves the notice period blank for the parties to fill: “8. FUTURE MOVES BY A PARENT. Unless there is a court order stating otherwise neither parent may move to a residence more than 60 miles further away from the other parent without giving the other parent ___ days’ notice of the change of residence and providing a copy of such notice to the court.” The words “passport,” “itinerary,” “out of state,” “out of the country” and “international” appear NOWHERE in the Basic Parenting Plan form. There is no default advance-notice period for vacation travel, no itinerary duty, no out-of-country clause and no passport clause.

Nothing in Oregon’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.

• Custody jurisdiction statute: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors109.html
• Abduction Prevention Act: https://www.uniformlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=c8a53ebd-d5aa-4805-95b2-5d6f2a648b2a
• Relocation rule: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors107.html
• Statewide parenting form: https://www.courts.oregon.gov/forms/Documents/BasicParentingPlanForm.pdf

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.