PKPA: Jurisdiction, Enforcement, and Overlap With the UCCJEA

The Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act is a federal law, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1738A, that decides which state’s court has authority over an interstate child custody case and requires every other state to honor that court’s orders. Congress passed it in 1980 to stop a parent from crossing state lines with a child and filing in a friendlier court to get a different custody result. It sets a strict order of priority for jurisdiction, blocks a second state from starting its own proceeding while the first one is still going, and opens up federal databases to help locate a child who has been taken.¹

Which State’s Court Has Authority

The statute ranks the possible jurisdictional bases. A lower-tier basis only comes into play when nothing higher applies, and the court also has to have jurisdiction under its own state law before any of this matters.¹

Home state. The strongest claim belongs to the state where the child lived with a parent (or someone acting as a parent) for at least six consecutive months right before the case was filed. For infants under six months old, it’s wherever the child has lived since birth. Short absences count toward the six months, so a two-week vacation doesn’t reset the clock.
Extended home state. If the child was removed within the last six months but a parent still lives in the original state, that state keeps its priority. A parent can’t defeat jurisdiction just by leaving.
Significant connection. Available only when no home state exists. The child and at least one parent or other contestant must have a meaningful tie to the state beyond simply being there, and the state must have access to substantial evidence about the child’s life, such as school, medical, and care records.
Emergency. Any state where the child is physically present can step in temporarily if the child has been abandoned or needs protection from abuse or the threat of abuse to the child, a sibling, or a parent.
Default. If no state qualifies under the categories above, or another state has declined jurisdiction, a court can take the case when doing so serves the child’s interests and it has jurisdiction under its own state law.

Ordering these bases is what gives the law its force. Home state jurisdiction always comes first, and significant-connection jurisdiction only opens up when there is no home state. The earlier Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act put those two bases on equal footing, which let two states claim authority at the same time. The PKPA made the ranking mandatory.¹

Emergency Jurisdiction Is Only Temporary

Emergency jurisdiction sits apart from the other bases because a court using it is not making a permanent custody decision. It is stepping in to protect a child who is physically in that state and faces immediate danger. The statute authorizes this when the child has been abandoned or when protection is necessary because a child, sibling, or parent has been subjected to or threatened with mistreatment or abuse.¹

A parent fleeing domestic violence with a child can get temporary protective orders wherever they land, even if that state has no other connection to the case. Once the crisis is stabilized, long-term custody authority still belongs to whichever state qualifies under the standard hierarchy.

Continuing Authority Over the Case

Once a court properly issues a custody order under the PKPA, it keeps exclusive authority going forward. No other state can modify the order as long as two things hold: the original state still has jurisdiction under its own laws, and it remains the home of the child or of any contestant.¹

“Contestant” covers parents, grandparents, and anyone else who claims a right to custody or visitation. Even if one parent moves to a new state with the child, the original court retains authority as long as the other parent (or another qualifying contestant) still lives there. Relocation alone doesn’t shift the case.

The other side of that rule: if everyone involved leaves — both parents, the child, and any other contestants — the original state’s continuing jurisdiction eventually lapses, and a new state can pick the case up under the standard hierarchy.

When Both Parents File in Different States

The statute is unusually direct on this point. A court “shall not exercise jurisdiction” over a custody proceeding while a court in another state is already exercising jurisdiction consistently with the PKPA.¹ If one parent files and the other races to file somewhere else, the second court has to stand down as long as the first court’s jurisdiction is proper. Before 1980, dueling proceedings and contradictory orders were routine; this provision is what stopped that.

Changing an Order Issued by Another State

Getting a different state to modify an existing custody order is intentionally difficult. Two conditions both have to be met. The new court has to independently qualify under the jurisdictional hierarchy, and the original court has to have either lost jurisdiction (because no contestant or child lives there anymore and it no longer has jurisdiction under its own law) or formally declined to use it. The same dual test applies to visitation orders.¹

In practice, judges in the two states often communicate about which forum is better positioned to handle the case. The original court may voluntarily step aside if the child’s connections and the available evidence have shifted entirely to the new state. Until that happens, the original order stands.

Full Faith and Credit, With a Notice Requirement

Every state has to enforce a custody or visitation order issued by another state, provided the order was made consistently with the PKPA. The statute uses the phrase “enforce according to its terms,” meaning the receiving state cannot treat the order as a suggestion or reopen the underlying dispute.¹ Congress passed this provision specifically to apply the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause to custody determinations, which courts had previously treated inconsistently.²

There is a due process condition. Before an order qualifies for this protection, everyone with a stake in the case — contestants, any parent whose rights haven’t been terminated, and anyone with physical custody of the child — must have received reasonable notice and a genuine opportunity to be heard. Ex parte orders, issued without notice to the other side, do not qualify.¹

The definition of “State” in the statute includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories, so orders from those jurisdictions get the same treatment as orders from any of the 50 states.³

Finding a Child Through the Federal Parent Locator Service

When a parent takes a child across state lines, locating them is often the first practical problem. The 1980 legislation that enacted the PKPA also opened the Federal Parent Locator Service, originally built for child support enforcement, to custody and parental kidnapping cases. Under 42 U.S.C. § 663, the Secretary of Health and Human Services must make the service available to help locate a parent or child when the information will be used to enforce laws against unlawful taking of a child or to enforce a custody or visitation order.⁴

Access is not open to the public. Authorized users include state agents or attorneys enforcing custody orders, courts with jurisdiction over custody cases, and federal or state officials investigating or prosecuting unlawful child-taking. The service can pull from Social Security records, tax data, and other federal databases, which puts it well beyond what any private investigator can access.⁴

You Cannot Sue in Federal Court to Enforce It

This trips up a lot of people. Even though the PKPA is federal law, it does not let you file a federal lawsuit to resolve a custody dispute or force a state to honor another state’s order. The Supreme Court decided this in Thompson v. Thompson (1988), holding that the PKPA “does not provide an implied cause of action in federal court to determine which of two conflicting state custody decisions is valid.”⁵

The statute works as a set of rules state courts have to follow, not as a doorway to federal court. If you believe a state court is ignoring another state’s valid custody order, your remedy is to raise the PKPA in state court, typically through a motion to dismiss the new proceeding or to enforce the existing order. Going to federal court is not an option, no matter how clearly the state is violating the statute.

How the PKPA Fits With the UCCJEA

The PKPA is federal law. The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act is a model state statute that has been adopted in every state and the District of Columbia. The two work together, but they are not identical, and where they conflict, the PKPA controls under federal supremacy.

The UCCJEA was drafted in 1997 to align with the PKPA and replace the older Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act. It mirrors the PKPA’s home-state priority and continuing-jurisdiction framework and adds detailed enforcement machinery the PKPA lacks, including procedures for registering out-of-state custody orders and getting expedited enforcement.

The practical division of labor: the PKPA tells state courts what they cannot do, and the UCCJEA sets out how state courts carry those commands out. If you need to enforce an out-of-state custody order, you will almost always work through your state’s UCCJEA procedures while the PKPA operates in the background as the constitutional floor.

Criminal Exposure Comes From Other Statutes

The PKPA is a civil jurisdictional statute. It doesn’t create criminal penalties on its own. But the 1980 legislation that enacted it expressly extended the Fugitive Felon Act (18 U.S.C. § 1073) to parental kidnapping. When a parent takes a child across state lines to avoid prosecution under a state felony kidnapping law, the FBI can issue a federal unlawful flight warrant to help locate and apprehend that parent.⁶

International cases are covered separately. The International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act (18 U.S.C. § 1204) makes it a federal crime to remove a child from the United States, or keep a child outside the country, with intent to block the other parent’s lawful custody rights. The penalty is up to three years in federal prison.⁷ The PKPA itself only covers disputes between U.S. states and territories, so international abductions fall under this separate criminal statute and often under the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction as well.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1738A – Full Faith and Credit Given to Child Custody Determinations
2
Congress.gov. Specifically Applicable Federal Law on Full Faith and Credit Clause
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 US Code 1738A – Full Faith and Credit Given to Child Custody Determinations
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 663 – Use of Federal Parent Locator Service in Connection With Enforcement or Determination of Child Custody and in Cases of Parental Kidnapping of a Child
5
Library of Congress. Thompson v Thompson, 484 US 174 (1988)
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1073 – Flight to Avoid Prosecution or Giving Testimony
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1204 – International Parental Kidnapping