Utah is a one-party consent state: if you are a party to a wire, electronic, or oral communication, you may record it without telling the other person.
A recording you made as a participant is generally usable in a Utah custody matter, subject to the court's discretion on relevance and how it was obtained. Recording a conversation you are not part of, without any party's consent, is a felony.
You may record a call or conversation you are part of.
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Short answer: yes, if you are a party to it
Utah is a one-party consent state. If you are a party to a wire, electronic, or oral communication — a phone call, a text-based exchange, or an in-person conversation — you may record it without telling anyone else involved. For a parent trying to keep an honest, dated record of a difficult co-parenting relationship, that means you do not need your co-parent's permission before you record your own conversations with them.
The statute and how it is written
Utah's wiretapping law is the Interception of Communications Act, codified at Utah Code Ann. § 77-23a-4. Subsection (1) makes it an offense to intentionally intercept, use, or disclose the contents of a wire, electronic, or oral communication. But subsection (7)(b) carves out the exception that governs ordinary people recording their own conversations: a person not acting under color of law may intercept a wire, electronic, or oral communication if that person is a party to the communication, or if one of the parties has given prior consent — unless the interception is for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act. That is the entire basis for Utah's one-party rule: your own presence on the call, or someone else's advance consent, satisfies the statute.
The penalty for getting it wrong
The consent exception only covers communications you are actually a party to. Recording a conversation between two other people — a device planted in a room, a line you are not on, or asking someone else to secretly record for you — falls outside subsection (7)(b) and is a crime. Under § 77-23a-4(10)(a), a violation is generally a third-degree felony, exposing you to up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. There is a narrow first-offense carve-out that reduces certain unencrypted radio-communication interceptions to a misdemeanor, but that exception is specific to radio and cellular signal interception and does not apply to recording an ordinary phone call or conversation. None of this exposure applies to a call or conversation you are lawfully a party to.
Using a recording in a Utah custody case
A recording you made as a participant is generally admissible in a Utah family law matter, in the sense that the recording statute itself does not stand in the way of it. The judge still decides how much weight to give the recording based on relevance, authenticity, and how it was obtained. Preserve the complete, original audio file rather than a trimmed clip, note the date and who was on the call, and never edit the recording — a file that has been cut down to the most damaging moment tends to raise questions about your credibility that outweigh whatever the missing context would have shown.
The interstate caveat: what if your co-parent lives elsewhere?
If your co-parent lives in an all-party consent state — California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and several others — the cautious, generally accepted practice for a call that crosses state lines is to follow the stricter rule for the entire call: announce that you are recording, or otherwise be sure everyone on the call knows. Which state's law would actually govern a specific interstate call depends on where each person was located and how a given court applies the conflict — a fact-specific legal question that this page cannot resolve for your situation. If your calls with your co-parent regularly cross state lines, confirm the current rule with a licensed Utah attorney before relying on an unannounced recording.
How to document it so it holds up
A recording is one piece of a record, not the whole case. Preserve the full audio file instead of a short excerpt, keep the complete text thread rather than a cropped screenshot, and attach reliable dates and times to everything you save. A consistent, contemporaneous history of missed exchanges, disparaging messages, and broken agreements is far harder for the other side to dispute than a single dramatic recording produced only after things went wrong.
Building the record before you need it
Most parents do not start documenting on the day everything is calm — they start after a bad exchange, when it is already harder to stay organized. If conflict with your co-parent is a recurring pattern rather than a one-time event, it is worth setting up your system before the next flashpoint: a single place to keep call recordings, a place to save full text threads, and a habit of noting the date and context the same day, not weeks later when memory has already smoothed over the details. A Utah judge is far more persuaded by a parent who can produce a calm, organized, months-long record than by one who shows up with a single recording and an accusation.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to tell my co-parent I am recording our calls in Utah?
No. Because you are a party to the communication, your own consent satisfies § 77-23a-4(7)(b). Announcing it is not legally required, though some parents choose to mention it anyway to avoid a later dispute about how the recording was obtained.
Does Utah's rule cover in-person conversations the same way as phone calls?
Yes. The consent exception in § 77-23a-4(7)(b) applies to wire, electronic, and oral communications alike, so being a party to an in-person conversation at a custody exchange is treated the same way as being a party to a phone call.
Can I record a conversation between my co-parent and our child that I am not part of?
Only if you are actually a party to that specific conversation, or a party has consented. If you are not part of it and recording it without consent, you fall outside the exception and into felony territory. This is a genuinely fact-specific question when a child is involved — talk to a family law attorney about your household's situation.
What about the misdemeanor carve-out I've heard about — does that apply to recording a phone call?
No. The reduced misdemeanor penalty in Utah's statute applies narrowly to certain first-offense, non-commercial interceptions of unscrambled radio signals, not to recording an ordinary phone call or conversation you are part of. For the situation covered on this page, the relevant rule is simply the one-party consent exception, and recording your own calls carries no criminal exposure at all.
How Copareo helps you document lawfully
Recording your own calls in Utah is lawful under § 77-23a-4(7)(b), but the harder part is keeping that record organized month after month, especially once a custody dispute is already underway. Copareo Secure Line routes your calls and texts with a co-parent through a dedicated line, time-stamps every exchange with a tamper-evident method, and seals it with a unique SHA-256 fingerprint. Everything is organized into a chain-of-custody record you can export as a single court-ready PDF with a table of contents — for $9.90 once, no subscription, nothing to cancel. See the full state-by-state recording law hub for other states, and read how to document co-parenting for court for the complete picture beyond recordings alone.
Not legal advice. This page summarizes Utah law for general information as of 2026-07-18 and is not a substitute for advice from a licensed Utah attorney. Recording and evidence rules change, and courts decide admissibility case by case. Verify against the official statute (Utah Code Ann. § 77-23a-4) and consult an attorney about your situation, especially for calls that cross state lines.