Which state decides custody.

No. The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act is a model law written in 1997 by the Uniform Law Commission (then called the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws). It has no force anywhere until a state legislature passes its own version of it. Almost every state has done so, but each state passes its own text, gives it its own numbers, and sometimes changes a word. So everything on this page describes the uniform model, and the section numbers used here are the model's numbers. Your state's statute is the one a judge will actually read, and its section numbers will look different. Look up your own state's version before you rely on any number here.

Because for decades two states could each hold a hearing about the same child and each issue a custody order, and both orders were real. The older 1968 uniform act let four different grounds for jurisdiction stand side by side with no ranking, so a parent who moved could often find a second court willing to hear the case. Congress added a federal law in 1980, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, to force states to honor each other's orders, but the two laws did not line up, and courts read the state act inconsistently. The result was exactly what the law was supposed to prevent: competing hearings and conflicting orders about one child. The 1997 act rewrote the rules so that one state, normally the child's home state, is the state that decides, and it stays the deciding state until specific things change.

Home state means the state where the child lived with a parent, or with someone acting as a parent, for at least six months in a row immediately before the custody case was started. For a baby under six months old it is the state the child has lived in since birth. A short absence, such as a holiday, does not break the six months. Under the model act, a court may make the first custody order only if it is the child's home state on the day the case starts, or was the home state within the previous six months and the child has gone but a parent or person acting as a parent still lives there. This six-month rule is the single most useful thing to know: moving to a new state does not immediately give the new state the power to decide custody, and the state the child just left usually keeps that power for six months after the move.

The model act sets out the other grounds in a strict order, and a court reaches the next one only when the one before it is unavailable. First, home state. Second, if no state qualifies as home state, or the home state court has stepped aside because another state is a better place to hear the case, a state where the child and at least one parent have a real connection beyond simply being there, and where there is substantial evidence about the child's care, protection, training and relationships. Third, if every state that could have taken the case under the first two grounds has stepped aside in favor of this one. Fourth, as a last resort, if no state anywhere would qualify under the first three. The act also says this list is the only way a court of that state can make a custody decision, and that having the parent or child physically present is neither required nor by itself enough.

Usually yes. The state whose court made the order keeps what the act calls exclusive, continuing jurisdiction. That means it stays the only state that can change its own order, and it stays that way even after somebody moves. There are only two ways it ends. One: a court of that state decides that neither the child, nor the child and one parent, nor the child and a person acting as a parent still have a significant connection with the state, and that substantial evidence about the child's care, protection, training and relationships is no longer available there. Two: a court of that state, or a court of another state, decides that the child, both parents and any person acting as a parent no longer live in that state. Note who decides the first one: only the original state's own court can make that call. Another state cannot simply announce that the first state has lost its grip on the case unless everyone has moved away.

Two things must be true at once. First, the new state must itself qualify to make a first custody order under the home state rule or the significant connection rule. Second, one of two things must have happened: either the original state's court has decided it no longer has exclusive, continuing jurisdiction, or has decided the new state is a more convenient place to hear the case, or a court in either state has decided that the child, both parents and any person acting as a parent no longer live in the original state. In plain terms, moving to a new state and waiting six months is not enough on its own. If a parent still lives in the state that made the order, that state normally has to release the case before another state can touch it.

The model act has a separate emergency door. A court of the state the child is now in can act if the child is present there and either the child has been abandoned or it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is being mistreated or abused or is threatened with it. Read that carefully: the danger can be to a sibling or to a parent, not only to the child. But an emergency order is temporary by design. If there is already a custody order from another state, or a case already running there, the emergency court must write into its order a set period long enough for the person to go and get an order from the state that properly has the case, and the emergency order lasts only until that other order arrives or the period runs out. If there is no earlier order and no case anywhere, the emergency order lasts until a proper state issues one, and it can become permanent only if the order says so and the new state becomes the child's home state, which takes six months. The act also requires the judges of the two states to talk to each other immediately.

Yes to the first. A court that does have jurisdiction may still decide it is an inconvenient place to hear the case and that another state would be better. Anyone can raise it, or the judge can raise it, or the other court can ask. Before deciding, the court must let the parties put in information and must weigh eight listed factors. Domestic violence is the first factor on the list. If the court steps aside it stays the case on condition that a case is promptly started in the state it names. Second, if a court has jurisdiction only because the person asking for it engaged in unjustifiable conduct, the court must refuse to use that jurisdiction, with three narrow exceptions, and it must normally order that person to pay the other side's costs, communication expenses, lawyer's fees, investigative fees, witness expenses, travel and child care, unless that party shows this would be clearly inappropriate. That is the provision aimed at a parent who takes a child to a new state to manufacture a friendlier court. Notice that the unjustifiable conduct rule opens with an exception for the emergency provision.

You register it. You send the court in the new state a written request together with two certified copies of the order and a sworn statement that, to the best of your knowledge, the order has not been changed. The court files it and has the other side served with notice. The other side then has a limited window, twenty days in North Carolina's version, to ask for a hearing contesting the registration, and there are only three grounds: the issuing court did not have jurisdiction, the order has since been vacated, stayed or modified, or the person contesting was not given notice in the original case. If nobody asks for a hearing in time, the registration is confirmed automatically, and once confirmed, nobody can raise anything later that could have been raised at registration. There is also a separate fast track. A petition for expedited enforcement must be verified, must have certified copies of the orders attached, and must state a list of specified facts, including whether any domestic violence, protective order, termination of parental rights or adoption proceeding is running.

The federal act, at 28 United States Code section 1738A, tells every state's authorities that they must enforce another state's custody or visitation order according to its terms, and must not change it except in the narrow situations the federal act itself allows. It applies only to orders the issuing court made in line with the federal act's own jurisdiction rules, which are built on the same six-month home state idea. It also says a state must not start a custody case while another state is already properly running one, and that the original state keeps continuing jurisdiction so long as it still has jurisdiction under its own law and the child or any contestant still lives there. On a conflict, the federal act is federal law and the state uniform act is state law, so the federal act sets the floor a state order has to meet to be enforceable elsewhere. This is why the 1997 uniform act was deliberately written to match the federal rules: an order made under the uniform act's standards is meant to be one that other states must honor under federal law.

It can be. Federal law makes it an offense to remove a child from the United States, to attempt to do so, or to keep a child who has been in the United States outside the country, when it is done with intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights. The penalty is a fine or up to three years in prison, or both. For this crime a child means someone under sixteen, and parental rights means the right to physical custody, joint or sole, including visiting rights, whether it comes from law, a court order, or a legally binding agreement. There are three affirmative defenses written into the statute. One is acting within a valid court order granting the person legal custody or visitation, obtained under the uniform custody jurisdiction acts and in effect at the time. The second is that the person was fleeing an incidence or pattern of domestic violence. The third covers a person who had the child under a court order and could not return the child for reasons outside their control, provided they notified or tried to notify the other parent within twenty four hours of the visit ending and returned the child as soon as possible.

The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is a treaty between participating countries. It is not about who should get custody. It is about sending a wrongfully removed or retained child back to the country where the child was habitually resident, so that the courts there can decide custody. A left-behind parent applies through the United States Central Authority, the Office of Children's Issues at the State Department, and a case for return can be brought in either a state court or a federal district court. The federal statute that implements the treaty in the United States is the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, at 22 United States Code sections 9001 to 9011. Under it the parent asking for return must prove wrongful removal or retention by a preponderance of the evidence. The other parent then has to prove an exception. The grave risk exception and the human rights exception must be proved by clear and convincing evidence; the other exceptions only by a preponderance. Habitual residence is not defined in the treaty. The Supreme Court has said it turns on the totality of the circumstances: the place where the child is at home.

The Children's Passport Issuance Alert Program is a free State Department service. You enroll a United States citizen child under eighteen, and the department watches for a passport application in that child's name. If one is filed, the department contacts the enrolling parent or guardian, checks whether the required consent of both parents has been given, and will tell you whether a United States passport already exists for the child. That is the whole of it, and it is worth being clear about what it is not. It is not a travel ban and it does not track your child's movements. It cannot stop another country from issuing its own passport, it cannot guarantee that a United States passport will be refused, and once a child already holds a valid passport, enrollment on its own will not keep the child from leaving the country. It is an early warning, not a lock on the door.