Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [140]
Military rules say that any service member who becomes a single parent or marries another service member must let the military know immediately. Then, within a specified period of time-30 days for active duty members and 60 days for reservists-the service member must submit to a commanding officer a Family Care Plan that makes provisions for the children in the event of the service member's short or long-term absence. Short-term absence is defined as 30 or fewer days; a long-term absence is 31 days or more.
Usually, the other parent will care for the children in the service member's absence, but in some circumstances the caregiver might be another member of the family, like a grandparent, aunt, or uncle, or a nonrelative.
Having Someone Else Visit Your Kids When You Can't
Judges in Iowa and Illinois have held that a service member may delegate visitation rights to a family member while the service member is deployed at a distance that makes personal visits impossible. The courts concluded that letting other family members exercise the service member's visitation rights would help children feel more connected with their absent parent.
Dealing with shared custody at a distance. When one parent is living a great distance away, it's especially important for the custodial parent to support the child's relationship with the distant parent by facilitating whatever form of contact is possible-phone, email, webcam, or sending cookies and pictures by mail. Chapter 6 contains suggestions.
Overseas Visitation
It's not out of the question for an older child to visit or even live with a military parent stationed overseas. For the most part, this isn't any different than when civilian parents living far apart must arrange for visitation and make decisions about where their kids will live. See Chapters 6 and 7 for the basics of child custody and visitation, including who pays for travel expenses-an issue that is often important where one parent is in the military.
Unfortunately, sometimes a service member parent takes advantage of the distance and fails to return the child to the United States when the visitation or custodial period ends. In essence, this is parental kidnapping, and the U.S. military rightfully frowns upon it. Regulations require the military to turn over to civilian authorities-the police or State Department -a service member who violates a valid child custody order, and to assure the return of the child. (For more about parental kidnapping, see Chapter 14.)
Because of the high stakes, it's especially important to make a clear plan for custody and visitation when one parent is living overseas. Include very specific terms for travel plans, including dates for the child's departure from and return to the United States.
Support for Children and Spouses
Like everyone else, service members are legally required to support their children. Just as is true with custody and visitation orders,
the Department of Defense policy is to require service members to comply with support orders. In fact, the military provides for sanctions, including punishment as severe as separation from military service, for failure to pay support. (Possibly for this reason, support compliance rates are significantly higher among military personnel than among civilians.)
More about child and spousal support. You can learn the basics of child and spousal support in Chapters 8 and 11.
Calculating Pay
One of the challenging things in a military divorce is figuring out the service member's actual income for purposes of calculating support. Military