I grew up in a military family. WhatÂ’s more, I was blessed that my parents remained married through my childhood, and that they recently marked 48 years of marriage together (with every sign that these two healthy septuagenarians will make it to the half century mark in 2011). But I knew fellow military brats who faced divorce, and heard stories about the problems created by deployments, changes of duty stations, and other elements of military life.

Now I see a story like this one, and my heart aches.

During the 10 months she was deployed in Iraq, Leydi Mendoza, a 22-year-old specialist in the New Jersey National Guard, did everything she could think of to ease her longing for the year-old daughter she had left back home.

A picture taken on her baby Elizabeth’s first Christmas was tucked inside the camouflage patrol cap she wore while guarding prisoners at Camp Cropper in Baghdad. Several times a week, she would phone her former companion, Daniel Llares, who was caring for their daughter, aching as she heard her little girl’s vocabulary grow from babble to phrases like “I miss you” and “I love you.”
And on the flight back in May, Specialist Mendoza fought back the guilt she felt about being half a world away for so many formative moments by telling herself that one day Elizabeth would be proud of her service.

But since her return, Mr. Llares has allowed Ms. Mendoza only a few brief visits with Elizabeth. Despite a written family care plan they had worked out with military officials outlining shared custody upon her return, Mr. Llares now believes it is too disruptive for the baby to spend more than a few hours at a time with “a mother she doesn’t really know or recognize that well,” said his lawyer, Amy Lefkowitz.

After months of arguments, an exchange of legal papers and a restraining order, Specialist Mendoza and Mr. Llares each are demanding full custody of Elizabeth, and are scheduled to appear at a court proceeding Tuesday to determine her fate.

“My daughter needs her mother,” Specialist Mendoza said in an interview last week at the National Guard Armory here in Teaneck. “I left my daughter, and they told me that when I got back, she’d be with me again. But now, it’s like I’m on my own.”

We ask so much of our men and women in uniform. We ask so much of their families as well. Under no circumstance should military service or deployment be the basis for a permanent change of custody or the denial of adequate visitation by a non-custodial member of the armed forces. And given the failure of the states to adequately protect the rights of our men and women in uniform, and the reluctance of the military to assist them in fighting family court decisions that fly in the face of the family care plans developed before deployments, Congress must act. Just as federal law already protects the employment and educational rights of servicemembers and veterans, it now appears that these laws must be amended to protect something even more precious – their families and their relationships with their own children.

Posted by: Greg at 11:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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