Travel, custody and relocation in Vermont

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

See a different stateVermont
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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 jurisdiction15 V.S.A. ch. 20 (§§ 1061-1096), “Uniform… 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 No relocation statute; governed by case law.
Triggered bynone Vermont has no relocation statute

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

Vermont custody jurisdiction sits under 15 V.S.A. ch. 20 (§§ 1061-1096), “Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act”. The home-state definition is at 15 V.S.A. § 1061(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

Vermont has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. No Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act appears in Vermont. The 15 V.S.A. (Domestic Relations) chapter index runs ch. 1 through ch. 25 and contains no abduction-prevention chapter; ch. 19 is the superseded Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act and ch. 20 is the UCCJEA. Treated as not enacted.

Moving, and how much warning you owe

Vermont has no parental-relocation statute, no statutory notice period and no mileage trigger. 15 V.S.A. ch. 11 (Annulment and Divorce), which contains the parental rights and responsibilities provisions (§§ 664-669), has no relocation section. A proposed move is handled as a motion to modify under 15 V.S.A. § 668(a): “On motion of either parent or any other person to whom custody or parental rights and responsibilities have previously been granted, and upon a showing of real, substantial, and unanticipated change of circumstances, the court may annul, vary, or modify an order made under this subchapter if it is in the best interests of the child, whether or not the order is based upon a stipulation or agreement.” Whether a particular relocation clears that threshold is a matter of Vermont case law.

Governed by case law, not statute. No Vermont relocation case is named here because none was verified on a Vermont Judiciary site during this research.

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

Vermont 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.

No Vermont statute sets a default parent-child contact schedule. 15 V.S.A. § 666 provides that the court shall adopt the parents’ own agreement on parental rights and responsibilities if it finds the agreement is in the child’s best interests, and § 665 requires the court otherwise to order parental rights and responsibilities in the child’s best interests – neither prescribes vacation blocks, advance-notice periods, itineraries, out-of-state or out-of-country travel terms or passport custody. Vermont supplies stipulation and order forms through the Judiciary’s Family Division, but there is no statewide default schedule of the Texas or Utah type.

Who holds the passport

Nothing in Vermont’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 Vermont

15 V.S.A. ch. 19 is the OLD Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act and is still printed in the title index alongside ch. 20. Cite ch. 20 (§ 1061 et seq.) for the UCCJEA.
Vermont’s modification threshold, ‘real, substantial, and unanticipated change of circumstances’ (§ 668(a)), is a higher bar than the plain best-interest standard used in relocation statutes elsewhere, and the moving parent must clear it before best interest is even reached.
Because there is no relocation statute, there is no Vermont default notice period. Any notice obligation comes from the parties’ own order.
legislature.vermont.gov serves an incomplete TLS chain (missing the GlobalSign RSA OV SSL CA 2018 intermediate), so many HTTP clients fail certificate verification against it even though the site is legitimate.

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.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.

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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.