The rest of what we have written about South Carolina. Every figure is quoted from South Carolina’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Travel, custody and relocation in South Carolina
The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what South Carolina law and South Carolina’s own court forms say about taking your child on a trip, moving, and who holds the passport between journeys.
See a different stateSouth Carolina
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.
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Which court decides — and why a trip does not change it
- Abduction-prevention powers — South Carolina has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.
- Moving, and how much warning you owe — Governed by case law, not statute.
- What the standard order says about travel — South Carolina publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Parenting plan required by S.C. Code Ann. § 63-15-220, with rules and forms to be developed by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
- Who holds the passport — Nothing in South Carolina’s statutes or standard forms addresses who holds the child’s passport.
- What catches people out in South Carolina
- Every state
In this subject 8
Which court decides — and why a trip does not change it
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Which court decides — and why a trip does not change it
- Abduction-prevention powers — South Carolina has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.
- Moving, and how much warning you owe — Governed by case law, not statute.
- What the standard order says about travel — South Carolina publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Parenting plan required by S.C. Code Ann. § 63-15-220, with rules and forms to be developed by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
- Who holds the passport — Nothing in South Carolina’s statutes or standard forms addresses who holds the child’s passport.
- What catches people out in South Carolina
- Every state
In this subject 8
South Carolina custody jurisdiction sits under S.C. Code Ann. §§ 63-15-300 to 63-15-394 (Title 63, ch. 15, Article 3), “Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act”. The home-state definition is at § 63-15-302(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.
Abduction-prevention powers
South Carolina has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. No Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act appears in the South Carolina Code. Title 63 (South Carolina Children’s Code) has no abduction chapter, and ch. 15 contains only the custody/visitation provisions, the UCCJEA (Art. 3), and the Uniform Deployed Parents Custody and Visitation Act (§ 63-15-500 et seq.). Treated as not enacted.
Moving, and how much warning you owe
South Carolina has no relocation-notice statute. The only statutory reference to relocation in the custody chapter is a best-interest factor: § 63-15-240(B)(16) directs the court to consider “whether one parent has relocated more than one hundred miles from the child’s primary residence in the past year, unless the parent relocated for safety reasons.” That is a factor a court weighs after the fact, not a notice requirement and not a distance trigger that obliges a parent to give notice or seek permission. Relocation is otherwise governed by South Carolina case law.
Governed by case law, not statute. South Carolina’s leading relocation decision was not verified on a South Carolina Judicial Branch site during this research, so no case is named here.
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
South Carolina publishes a statewide parenting form or guideline — Parenting plan required by S.C. Code Ann. § 63-15-220, with rules and forms to be developed by the South Carolina Supreme Court. 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.
South Carolina’s statute mandates a parenting plan but does not itself set a default vacation or travel schedule. § 63-15-220(A): “At all temporary hearings where custody is contested, each parent must prepare, file, and submit to the court a parenting plan, which reflects parental preferences, the allocation of parenting time to be spent with each parent, and major decisions, including, but not limited to, the child’s education, medical and dental care, extracurricular activities and religious training.” § 63-15-220(C): “The South Carolina Supreme Court shall develop rules and forms for the implementation of the parenting plan.” The content of the Supreme Court’s parenting-plan form – and therefore what it says about vacations, advance notice, itineraries, out-of-state or out-of-country travel and passports – could not be retrieved: sccourts.org returned no usable content when we checked. There is no statutory standard possession schedule in South Carolina.
Who holds the passport
Nothing in South Carolina’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 South Carolina
Sources for this page
- Custody jurisdiction statute: https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t63c015.php
- Abduction Prevention Act: https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/title63.php
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.sccourts.org/ – returned effectively empty responses; the Supreme Court parenting-plan form we could not read; https://www.uniformlaws.org – renders enactment data only via JavaScript; no JS renderer available in this environment
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.