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Bill would safeguard custody for some troops

By Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 27, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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U.S. troops already stressed by long and dangerous deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan now face a new threat - losing custody of their children if a judge should rule that their prolonged absence makes them an "unstable parent."

Michael Hill, a Jefferson County sheriff's deputy who has served 26 years in the Army Reserves, said his attorney warned him that could happen when he was mobilized in 2003 for two years to train soldiers at Fort Carson and Fort Bliss, Texas.

The lawyer cautioned that Hill's ex-wife "could use the argument that you're not a stable parent because you're in the military."

Hill got worried again last fall when his reserve unit was alerted that it might be sent to Afghanistan. While Hill has maintained primary custody of his now 16-year-old son, the citizen soldier said possible combat duty overseas feeds his family's stress.

"You're fighting for your country and for its freedoms, but you can't protect what's in the best interest of your family," said Hill, who saw a fellow soldier lose custody of his son while on active duty.

Rep. Jeanne Labuda, D-Denver, and Sen. Steve Ward, R-Littleton, are sponsoring House Bill 1176 to protect the child custody rights of Colorado National Guard troops and military reservists. The bill cannot address regular military troops, who come under federal jurisdiction.

"Why do you break up the family of someone who has volunteered to go and defend our country?" Labuda asked Tuesday.

HB 1176, which faces final House passage today, would require that only a temporary "interim" child custody order be issued when such troops are deployed for active duty stateside or overseas. This would allow a child to live temporarily with an ex-spouse during that time.

But when the military parent returns home, the bill mandates that the interim order must end and that the parent would reclaim the same child custody rights he or she had before deployment.

National Public Radio recently reported that a growing number of soldiers are losing custody of their children, not because they're bad parents but because they've been deployed to overseas war zones.

A highlighted case is that of Tanya Towne, who lost primary custody of her 12-year-old son to her ex-husband while her New York National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq in 2004. The boy now lives with his father in Virginia.

Towne lost again in January, when a New York state appeals court, while praising her as an excellent mother, upheld the father's primary custody. The five-judge panel found that her deployment and other issues in her life, including the breakup of her second marriage, had contributed to an unstable home life, NPR reported.

"I don't care how they word it, it's a punishment to the soldier," the devastated mother told NPR.

Ward, who just returned from six months of duty in Iraq as a colonel with the Marine Corps Reserve, said the problem is the "unintended consequence" of the strain relentless combat deployments are placing on active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops and their families.

"The Army is sending people forward on 15 month deployments and that's breaking soldiers and it's breaking families," Ward said.

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