On February 15th, I received a letter from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in which the Secretary agreed with our fight for a Uniformed Standard of Protection for Service members in child custody disputes.
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As many of you know, I have been working to protect the child custody rights of deployed military parents since hearing the story of Eva Crouch-Slusher, a Captain in the Kentucky National Guard. Captain Slusher served an 18-month mobilization with the Kentucky National Guard starting in 2003. Her service was later used as the basis to strip her of custody of her daughter, Sara. After an emotional and expensive two-year legal battle, she regained custody of her daughter. Since then, Eva has joined me in advocating for legislation to help protect other military parents from similar custody fights.

On February 15th, I received a letter from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in which the Secretary agreed with our fight for a Uniformed Standard of Protection for Service members in child custody disputes. In his letter, Secretary Gates wrote: “I have been giving this matter a lot of thought and believe [the Department of Defense] should change [its] position to one where [they] are willing to consider whether appropriate legislation can be crafted that provides Service members with a federal uniform standard of protection in cases where it is established that military service is the sole factor involved in a child custody decision involving a Service member…we should work with Congress to pursue an acceptable legislative formula.”

A Uniform Standard of Protection is a federal law which would apply to all jurisdictions in the United States. Currently, 13 states have few or no state laws safeguarding troops’ custody rights, while 21 have some laws on the book and 16 have met the Defense Department’s current desired level of protection in child custody cases. The Standard I’m seeking would apply specifically to those cases where service is the sole factor involved in a custody decision.

This decision by the Secretary follows years of effort. I have introduced the Service Members Family Protection Act five times and each time it has passed the House of Representatives, as either part of the National Defense Authorization Act and once by voice vote with no opposition. Unfortunately, each time the legislation has languished in the Senate. With the support of Secretary Gates, our effort to protect service member’s child custody rights finds new momentum.

This issue also affects our troops while they are deployed. When troops are deployed they carry the burden of what will happen to their families while they are away. To have our men and women in uniform worried about these issues detracts from the overall war effort and can impact their ability to complete their mission. In order to keep our military units strong, families must first be strong at home.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress on both sides of the aisle to see that we create a Uniform Standard for our Service members. With continued support amongst members of the House Armed Services Committee, the House as a whole, and now the Secretary of Defense, there is an opportunity to extend military parents the protection they deserve. The least we can do is to ensure that our soldiers’ rights as parents are being guarded while they defend our freedom.