Tag:military child custody
Family Care Plans and Custody Orders in Virginia
A Family Care Plan (FCP) is a document that certain active duty or reserve servicemembers, and some DOD civilians, are required by the Department of Defense to maintain in order to ensure that their children (and incapacitated parents) are taken care of if they are called away to service.
Any person required by DOD Instruction 1342.19 to maintain a Family Care Plan must do so in a certain amount of time. Other than the requirements with respect to timely filing, the instructions are fairly broad as to what can and should be included in the FCP.
At a minimum, a Family Care Plan allows the military member to designate another party to care for his or her child during any period where the member is unavailable due to military service obligations.
Though the DOD requires this plan of action and files it in each servicemember’s … Read More »
Military Deployment and Child Custody in Virginia
“I’m Deploying! How does that affect my custodial or visitation rights to my child?”
Deploying is a unique and difficult fact of life for most every military family. For those parents involved in a custody or visitation dispute, deployment can be an even more stressful event, as the deploying parent must also be concerned with arrangements for his or her child during the required absence.
Given that Virginia has the second largest military population in the United States, it is not surprising that in 2008 the Virginia legislature addressed the concerns of deploying parents with a statutory scheme designed to protect the custodial or visitation rights of our men and women in uniform.
The Virginia Military Parents Equal Protection Act, incorporated into Virginia Code Sections 20-124.7 through 20-124.10, defines who is considered to be a deploying parent, including not only active duty but … Read More »
Child Custody And Deploying Military Parents In Virginia
Today the Uniform Law Commission is meeting to consider final approval of proposed custody rules for military servicemembers. Their proposal—the Uniform Deployed Parents Custody and Visitation Act (UDPCVA)—seeks to address many of the important issues that arise when a military parent deploys, and to resolve the wide variety of laws among the different states.
A servicemember parent will often create a Family Care Plan (FCP) to become effective upon their deployment, but in cases where a valid court order exists the FCP and order often come in conflict. The non-deploying parent is not required to sign off on an FCP, and many times the wishes of the deploying servicemember as set out in the FCP are overruled by the court order. Moreover, custody orders very rarely contain express provisions providing for a potential delegation of parental rights and responsibilities to a … Read More »
