The pressures of military life are hard on marriages. It’s no secret that given the nature of the job, with potential reassignments and deployments along with other challenges, military duty sometimes contributes to divorce among families in our armed forces.
When military couples consider divorce, they must thoroughly review the issues of relocation, time-sharing and child support as not to upset their children’s lives. There is no question that a relocation or deployment will have a considerable effect on the children.
Seeking modifications after deployment
Such scenarios exemplify why a family care plan is crucial in military time-sharing agreements. A family care plan assigns caregivers, ensuring child care in situations such as a relocation or deployment.
When a military parent gets temporarily assigned, activated or deployed and such an action affects that person’s ability to fulfill time-sharing obligations, he or she can benefit from Florida’s law on custody and visitation for deployed parents.
Under this law, the military parent may seek modifications pertaining to time-sharing and parental responsibility.
Florida enacted the UDCVA
State law permits the deployed parent to choose someone else to have the time-sharing with the child on that parent’s behalf. The person must be either a family member, stepparent or the child’s relative through marriage.
Florida passed the law – known as the Uniform Deployed Parents Custody Visitation Act (UDCVA) — upon the recommendations of the Uniform Law Commission. The uniform law addresses matters related to time sharing when a parent undergoes a military deployment. It gives states the ability to enact laws that help courts when confronted with unusual custody situations.
A federal law also helps
A certain federal law also may prove advantageous to military members going through divorce.
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) provides specific rights to military service members in civil court matters. In such situations, military members may delay court proceedings if it impedes on their ability to follow through on their active-duty assignment.
The military parent can seek a 90-day delay or stay on the divorce proceedings. Also, the judge may grant an additional 90-day stay. The delays not only may apply to divorce cases, but child paternity and child support proceedings, too.
Take advantage of these laws
Going through a divorce just seems to add to the multiple challenges as a member of the military service. But when faced with divorce and deployment, take advantage of the SCRA and UDPCVA. These laws provide certain protections for military service members in divorce and time-sharing matters.