More on Wyoming

The rest of what we have written about Wyoming. Every figure is quoted from Wyoming’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.

Travel, custody and relocation in Wyoming

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

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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 jurisdictionWyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 20-5-201 through 20-5-502,… Which state’s court may decide custody — and why a holiday elsewhere does not move it.
Abduction Prevention ActYesWyo. Stat. Ann. tit. 20, ch. 8, §§ 20-8-101 through 20-8-112, “Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.” § 20-8-101: “This act shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.’” Per the Uniform Law Commission’s bill data the enacting measure was 2024 S.F. 36 (Joint Judiciary Interim Committee).
Relocation notice30 days None. Wyoming has no relocation statute governing whether a parent may move with a child. The only statutory provision that touches moving is a required term of every visitation order: Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-202(a)(iii).
Triggered bychange of home city or state of residence no mileage threshold. Note this is a notice-of-address duty imposed on BOTH parents by the visitation order, not a relocation-permission trigger.

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

Wyoming custody jurisdiction sits under Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 20-5-201 through 20-5-502, “Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act” (Title 20, ch. 5, arts. 2-5). § 20-5-201: “This act may be cited as the ‘Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.’”. The home-state definition is at Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-5-202(a)(vii) – “‘Home state’ means the state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent for at least six (6) consecutive months immediately before the commencement of a child custody proceeding or, in the case of a child less than six (6) months of age, the state in which the child lived from birth with a parent or a person acting as a parent. A period of temporary absence of any of the persons mentioned 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

Wyoming has enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act at Wyo. Stat. Ann. tit. 20, ch. 8, §§ 20-8-101 through 20-8-112, “Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.” § 20-8-101: “This act shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act.’” Per the Uniform Law Commission’s bill data the enacting measure was 2024 S.F. 36 (Joint Judiciary Interim Committee).. Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-8-108(b): “If, at a hearing on a petition under this act or on the court’s own motion, the court after reviewing the evidence finds a credible risk of abduction of the child, the court shall enter an abduction prevention order.” Under § 20-8-108(c) that order may include “(i) An imposition of travel restrictions that require that a party traveling with the child outside a designated geographical area provide the other party with the following: (A) The travel itinerary of the child; (B) A list of physical addresses and telephone numbers at which the child can be reached at specified times; and (C) Copies of all travel documents”; “(ii) A prohibition of the respondent directly or indirectly: (A) Removing the child from this state, the United States or another geographic area without permission of the court or the petitioner’s written consent…”; “(iii) A requirement that a party register the order in another state as a prerequisite to allowing the child to travel to that state”; and “(iv) With regard to the child’s passport: (A) A direction that the petitioner place the child’s name in the United States department of state’s child passport issuance alert program; (B) A requirement that the respondent surrender to the court or the petitioner’s attorney any United States or foreign passport issued in the child’s name, including a passport issued in the name of both the parent and the child; and (C) A prohibition upon the respondent from applying on behalf of the child for a new or replacement passport or visa.” § 20-8-108(c)(v) can additionally require the respondent, as a prerequisite to exercising custody or visitation, to file an authenticated copy of the passport/travel-restriction order with the U.S. Department of State Office of Children’s Issues and the relevant foreign consulate or embassy and to produce an acknowledgment that no passport has been applied for or issued. Every order under § 20-8-108(a)(v) must identify “the child’s country of habitual residence at the time of the issuance of the order.” Risk factors are at § 20-8-107 and a warrant to take physical custody at § 20-8-109.

Moving, and how much warning you owe

Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-202(a): “The court may order visitation it deems in the best interests of each child and the court shall: … (iii) Require either parent who plans to change their home city or state of residence, to give written notice thirty (30) days prior to the move, both to the other parent and to the clerk of district court stating the date and destination of the move. In the event a confidentiality order has been entered pursuant to W.S. 35-21-112 or any other court order allowing a party to maintain confidentiality of addresses or other information identifying the residence of the victim of domestic abuse, the address, city or state of residence or other information identifying the residence of the victim of domestic abuse shall remain confidential.” That is the whole of it: 30 days’ written notice of the date and destination, to the other parent AND to the clerk of court. There is no objection procedure, no waiting period, no presumption, no burden allocation and no list of relocation factors anywhere in the Wyoming statutes. Whether a move is permitted, and what happens to custody if it occurs, is decided under the general custody-modification provision, Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-204 (substantial change in circumstances / best interests), with the best-interest factors in § 20-2-201(a) – one of which, § 20-2-201(a)(viii), is “[g]eographic distance between the parents’ residences.” Wyoming relocation law is therefore judge-made and must be researched in the Wyoming Supreme Court’s case law, not in the statute book.

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

Wyoming 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.

We could not read the form’s travel terms from an official source, so we are not describing them.

Who holds the passport

Passports are addressed only in the UCAPA chapter, Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-8-108(c)(iv), and only after the court finds a credible risk of abduction: Child Passport Issuance Alert Program enrollment, surrender to the court or petitioner’s attorney of any U.S. or foreign passport issued in the child’s name (including a joint parent-and-child passport), and a bar on applying for a new or replacement passport or visa on the child’s behalf. Nothing in Wyoming’s custody and visitation statutes (§§ 20-2-201 to 20-2-204) mentions passports, and there is no statewide standard order supplying a default, so absent a chapter 8 abduction-prevention order Wyoming has no default rule on who holds the child’s passport.

What catches people out in Wyoming

Wyoming has no relocation statute. Anyone citing a Wyoming relocation section, notice-and-objection procedure, mileage trigger or statutory factor list is citing something that does not exist. Relocation in Wyoming is governed by case law applied through the ordinary custody-modification standard.
The 30-day requirement in § 20-2-202(a)(iii) is easy to misread as a relocation statute. It is a mandatory TERM the court must put in a visitation order; it obliges “either parent” – not just the custodial one – to give 30 days’ written notice of a change of home city or state, and the notice goes to the CLERK OF DISTRICT COURT as well as the other parent. It confers no veto and starts no objection clock.
That notice duty is triggered by a change of home CITY, not by miles or by crossing the state line – so an in-state move from one Wyoming town to another triggers it.
Wyoming DID enact UCAPA, in 2024 (S.F. 36), at Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 20-8-101 to 20-8-112. Sources written before 2024 will say Wyoming has no abduction-prevention act; that is out of date. This is the practical route to itinerary, travel-document and passport-surrender relief in Wyoming.
There is no statewide default possession schedule. Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-201(d) tells the court not to “favor or disfavor any form of custody,” so the vacation, notice and travel terms in any Wyoming case come entirely from the individual decree.
The domestic-violence carve-out in § 20-2-202(a)(iii) keeps a protected party’s address, city and state confidential notwithstanding the notice requirement.

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://documents.courts.state.wy.us/Opinions/*.pdf – every Wyoming Supreme Court opinion PDF requested from this host returned HTTP 404 to this environment (including URLs returned by search as live), so we could not verify the leading Wyoming relocation decisions against a court source. This page therefore names no Wyoming case, rather than naming one from memory.; https://www.courts.state.wy.us/form/… and /LegalHelp/Forms – the Wyoming Judicial Branch form pages and the ECVSP-23 order PDF returned 403/404 to this environment, so we could not read the travel and vacation language, if any, in Wyoming’s self-help decree and custody-order forms. This page therefore describes none, rather than guessing.

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.