Hollingsworth: Custody hearing goes on despite deployment

[CommunityEditor]

While Spc. Mary Hollingsworth dispensed weapons at Camp Anaconda outside Balad, Iraq, there was another battle waiting for her at home.

During her deployment, the father of her 5-year-old son filed legal papers trying to get custody. Victor Diaz Jr. portrayed Hollingsworth as more interested in being a soldier than taking care of her son.

Hollingsworth shipped home from her National Guard duties a month early to appear in court, and she has custody — for now.

While federal law protects deployed soldiers from civil proceedings such as bankruptcy and evictions, child custody isn’t mentioned. Judges often delay debt collections and similar cases, but child visitation and custody are left out.

Unlike lease payments, a child “can’t be put into a state of suspended animation” while a parent is deployed, said Mark Sullivan, a Raleigh lawyer and author of “The Judges’ Guide to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.”

Judges find it nearly impossible to support delaying a custody case under the federal statute, Sullivan said.

Lawmakers in North Carolina and other states have drafted bills to ease the burden on National Guard soldiers because judges are compelling soldiers such as Hollingsworth to rush home. Military commanders are worried the court hearings could endanger battlefield readiness.

In Hollingsworth’s case, her son’s father petitioned a judge in Gaston County for custody last July when she was in Iraq. The boy was living with Hollingsworth’s mother, and Diaz argued a “substantial change of circumstance” allowed him to claim custody.

Judge Dennis Redwing granted Diaz eight weeks visitation and scheduled a custody hearing, and Hollingsworth asked her commanders to help her get home.

“Obviously, everyone is ignoring the [Servicemembers Civil Relief Act],” Capt. Cale Moody wrote in an e-mail to Hollingsworth’s lawyers in August. “Therefore, she needs to return home as soon as possible to take care of this situation. However, we are somewhat busy fighting a war and in order to send Hollingsworth home we need proof of a hard date of when the custody hearing will be.”

Larry Langson, a lawyer for Hollingsworth, said the outcome would have been different had the boy’s mother stayed with her unit in Iraq.

“If she didn’t come back, she would have lost custody,” he said.


Full article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/20...earing_070529/


Serve your country, lose custody of your child? Is this right? What are the issues in this type of decision? Where is the line?

By not allowing child custody battles to be included in those civil proceedings that can be 'postponed' we are doing this Nation a big disservice. I have served for 18 plus years and I too often see men and women alike with all their admirable service dismissed due to their current family issues. Also, there are often civilians at home that would like to try to use this 'situation' to bring their child's parent home to safety. It can go either way - either the Soldier cons the parent into starting a problem to get them home or the other parent does it for the safety of their childs parent. These are easy outs for those who made a committment and reaped benefits or a career buster for a Servicemember whose spouse or ex has another motive.

The military no matter what the shortages are still gets rid of problematic people. We get rid of overweight people everyday, yet we deploy them as-is if they are still i the system at deployment time. We get rid of openly gay Soldiers yet we cry retention issues.

Our biggest problem is that we've gone soft on integrity which is what's required to have no doubts about who truly wants what when these 'problems' come up.

I can't believe that military members who are willing to put their lives on the lines in order to protect their children's and other American's freedom has to worry about things like this. Something needs to change in order to protect these parents rights. Speaking from experience, I was in the Army for almost 9 years and had to leave to military in order to retain custody of my son. Luckily for me, my ETS date was just slightly before my final court appearance in which my attorney and the judge had advised me to end my military career, to include any affiliation with the Armed Services. I also had a friend who lost custody of her son after she got out of the Army, because her current husband was in the mililtary and the judge here in Columbus, GA felt that the child would be in a unstable home because she was married to a soldier. So he awarded custody to her ex-husband. SHE WASN"T EVEN IN THE MILITARY!!! HER HUSBAND WAS!! Us military folks, to include military spouses, need some kind of protection. This is so ridiculous!!