As I’ve discussed in numerous columns, deployed military parents face a variety of family law-related problems, including custody and child support. In my co-authored Veterans Day column Protect Deployed Parents’ Rights (Various papers, 11/11/06) I explained:
“Divorced or separated military parents often lose custody of their children–and sometimes permanently forfeit any meaningful role in their lives–simply because they have served their country. Many married parents deploy overseas, never suspecting that their parenthood essentially ended the day they left home.”ÂÂÂ
Associated Press reporter Pauline Arrillaga wrote an excellent piece on this issue this week–Deployed Troops Battle for Child Custody (5/5/07). Arrillaga narrates the stories of several deployed service personnel who lost their children as a result of family law machinations done in their absence:
“Army reservist Brad Carlson lived in Phoenix with his wife, Bianca, and three kids when he volunteered to deploy to Kuwait in 2003. His wife and children were spending that summer with her parents in Luxembourg and expected to remain there until he returned from duty.
“A year later, after his wife indicated she wanted to end the marriage and remain in Luxembourg, Carlson filed for divorce in an Arizona court, seeking custody of Dirk, Sven and Phoebe, all American citizens.
“The Arizona court dismissed the custody case after Bianca’s lawyer argued that jurisdiction belonged in Luxembourg because the children had resided there for at least six months.
“Again citing the Servicemembers Act, Carlson’s attorney argued that the time the kids spent in Luxembourg shouldn’t count toward residency because it came during Carlson’s deployment.
“A Luxembourg court awarded custody to Bianca, and the kids remain there to this day.
“They call him ‘Bradley’ now, he says, instead of ‘Daddy.’ They converse in German in stilted long-distance phone calls that provide few precious minutes for a father to absorb missed moments – soccer games, kindergarten, birthdays. On Dirk’s 9th, Carlson stood beneath a rainbow-colored birthday banner and had a friend take a digital photo of him holding a sign: ‘Happy 9th Birthday Dirk!’
“Tears fill his eyes when it hits him: ‘That’s how I celebrate.’
“‘I feel really betrayed,’ Carlson says. ‘To be able to send me into harm’s way… and my own country can’t protect my child custody rights. Why aren’t they looking out for me, when I’m looking out for the country?’”
Carlson’s story is similar to that of Gary S., the subject of my column The Betrayal of the Military Father (Los Angeles Daily News, 5/4/03). Former California Senator Bill Morrow saw that column, and, with the enormous assistance of Sacramento lobbyist Michael Robinson, it led to AB 1082, a military parents’ bill signed into law in California in 2005. Some of you participated in our campaign in support of that bill–to learn more, click here.
In the column I wrote:
“When Gary, a San Diego-based US Navy SEAL, was deployed in Afghanistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, he never dreamed that his service to his country would cost him his little son. Gary’s son was not taken from him by a terrorist or a kidnapper. This 17-year Navy veteran with an unblemished military and civilian record was effectively stripped of his right to be a father by a California court.”
Arrillaga also discusses the case of Lt. Eva Crouch of the Kentucky National Guard. When she was mobilized, her daughter Sara (pictured above) went to stay with her father. Arrillaga writes:
“A year and a half later, her assignment up, Crouch pulled into her driveway with one thing in mind – bringing home the little girl who shared her smile and blue eyes. She dialed her ex and said she’d be there the next day to pick Sara up, but his response sent her reeling. ‘Not without a court order you won’t.’ Within a month, a judge would decide that Sara should stay with her dad. It was, he said, in ‘the best interests of the child.’
“What happened? Crouch was the legal residential caretaker; this was only supposed to be temporary. What had changed? She wasn’t a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or an abusive mother.
“Her only misstep, it seems, was answering the call to serve her country.
“Crouch and an unknown number of others among the 140,000-plus single parents in uniform fight a war on two fronts: For the nation they are sworn to defend, and for the children they are losing because of that duty.
“A federal law called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is meant to protect them by staying civil court actions and administrative proceedings during military activation. They can’t be evicted. Creditors can’t seize their property. Civilian health benefits, if suspended during deployment, must be reinstated.
“And yet service members’ children can be – and are being – taken from them after they are deployed.
“Some family court judges say that determining what’s best for a child in a custody case is simply not comparable to deciding civil property disputes and the like; they have ruled that family law trumps the federal law protecting servicemembers. And so, in many cases when a soldier deploys, the ex-spouse seeks custody, and temporary changes become lasting.”
Crouch did eventually get her daughter back–after all, she is a woman in family court–and now the father is only allowed a few days a month with the girl. The better solution would have been shared parenting and a rough 50-50 time split, with one or more parent(s) moving to accommodate the other one. Eva Crouch was treated unfairly, but her case pales in comparison to many others.
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