Military parents’ custody rights
are affirmed in McCoy’s legislation

‘We should always respect armed-forces
folks who are deployed,’ legislator maintains

April 24, 2009

OLYMPIA – Just two and a half days before the final legislative gavel, a Snohomish County lawmaker’s plan garnered final legislative approval to protect the child-custody rights of deployed-military parents.

“When they’re away from home serving their country, military parents shouldn’t have to worry about their child-custody orders being changed around,” said state Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, who convinced colleagues both in the House and in the Senate unanimously to support his House Bill 1170.

“It just stands to reason and common sense that we should always respect armed-forces folks who are deployed.”

Now on its way to the governor’s desk, McCoy’s bipartisan measure will make sure that any changes made in a parent’s custodial arrangements because of his or her military duty “would only be temporary changes in nature.”

Without this policy in the state of Washington, he explained, there have been at least some court decisions that are “indifferent to the rights of military parents.”

“Military fathers and mothers away from home because they’re serving our country shouldn’t have to suffer through their parental rights being abused, including any of their custodial arrangements.

“Furthermore, people in the armed forces should have every right to participate in any custody proceedings,” McCoy said. “But right now they obviously can’t participate in the hearings if they’re deployed. We should always respect service dads and moms who are deployed and serving in a wartime capacity.”

The issue hits home particularly hard here in the state of Washington, which of all the states has the seventh highest population of active-duty military personnel.

Unfortunately, McCoy noted, “the obvious stresses of wartime military service lead to more divorces than is usually the case in military families. And for that reason, this is an issue that comes up these days more frequently than when our nation isn’t at war.”

Military parents will have an opportunity to resolve custody questions before they’re deployed, according to other terms of the McCoy legislation.

The bill makes it possible for a court to delegate the residential time or visitation of a military parent to a person other than the parent during the military parent’s deployment. The family member or other person to whom residential time or visitation is delegated would have to be someone who has a close and substantial relationship to the youngster. Also, a court would have to speed up hearings and make it possible for a military parent to testify electronically if the military parent cannot be in court in person.

McCoy said another key objective in the bill “is to make the custody proceedings more streamlined so that any unresolved issues can be sorted out more fairly and efficiently.

“This measure also seeks to have folks use the dispute-resolution process more extensively in order to discuss the delegation of residential time, as well as disagreements about visitation issues.”

Representatives from the National Guard Association of Washington, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Washington Military Department testified for McCoy’s legislation in a committee hearing.