Military families live with a level of uncertainty that traditional parenting plans are not designed to address. Deployments, temporary assignments, training, mobilizations, and permanent changes of station can alter a family’s schedule with little warning and oftentimes with minimal input from either parent.
For military parents in Georgia, a parenting plan should do more than establish who has the children when and where. A well-drafted military parenting plan should anticipate what happens when military service makes the regular schedule impossible.
The goal is not to predict every set of orders a servicemember may receive. It is to create a framework that tells both parents what happens when those orders come.
Deployment and Mobilization: Military Child Custody Considerations
Most people are familiar with the concept of deployment: an extended military assignment that takes a servicemember away from his or her normal duty station and away from their children. A servicemember may deploy within the United States (CONUS) or outside the continental United States (OCONUS).
Georgia law provides specific protections for military parents.
Firstly, under O.C.G.A. § 19-9-3, a parent’s military deployment, standing alone, cannot serve as the sole basis for claiming that a material change in circumstances has occurred for purposes of permanently modifying custody.
Georgia law also provides procedures for temporarily modifying parenting arrangements when deployment affects a servicemember’s ability to exercise his or her parenting rights.
In certain circumstances, a deploying parent may request that some of his or her parenting time be temporarily exercised by an eligible family member.
The law also contemplates additional parenting time immediately before and after deployment, continued communication between the deployed parent and child, and parenting time when the servicemember returns on leave or furlough. See O.C.G.A. § 19-9-3(i).
Mobilization creates similar problems for National Guard and Reserve families. A parent does not necessarily have to be sent overseas to become unavailable for his or her regular parenting time. A servicemember mobilized somewhere within the United States may be hundreds or thousands of miles from the child.
What Should a Military Deployment Parenting Plan Address?
A military parenting plan should therefore address deployment and mobilization before either occurs. Among other things, parents should consider including provisions addressing:
- How quickly the servicemember must provide the other parent with orders or other available information regarding the anticipated absence;
- When the temporary parenting schedule begins and when the regular schedule resumes;
- Whether the servicemember receives additional parenting time immediately before departure and after returning;
- How parenting time will be handled when the servicemember returns home temporarily on approved leave;
- Whether missed parenting time will be made up and, if so, how and when;
- Whether and under what circumstances parenting time may be temporarily delegated to a qualifying family member;
- How frequently the deployed parent and child may communicate by telephone, FaceTime, Zoom, etc.;
- How time-zone differences, operational requirements, and communication restrictions will be handled; and
- What information each parent must provide regarding changes to orders, return dates, or availability.
A good plan should also recognize that military orders change often. Return dates are moved back. Leave gets denied. Missions and training schedules change. A parenting plan should provide enough structure to protect both parents while allowing reasonable flexibility when circumstances genuinely are outside the servicemember’s control.
TDY and TAD: Temporary Military Assignments and Parenting Time
Temporary Duty (TDY) and Temporary Additional Duty (TAD) are temporary military assignments away from a servicemember’s permanent duty station. Depending on the branch and assignment, these orders may last only a few days or may continue for several months.
Although the servicemember remains assigned to his or her permanent duty station and is generally expected to return, TDY or TAD can still make the normal parenting schedule impossible.
This is where a generic parenting plan can quickly become frustrating. If the plan simply says that a parent receives every other weekend, what happens when that parent is sent away for six weeks of training? Does the parent lose that time entirely? Does the schedule resume where it would have been? Is there make-up time? What happens if the servicemember returns during what would otherwise be the other parent’s weekend?
Those questions are much easier to answer before the assignment occurs.
Military Leave and Make-Up Parenting Time
Servicemembers generally accrue 2.5 days of ordinary paid leave each month, or 30 days per year. Accruing leave, however, does not mean that a servicemember can simply choose when to use it. Military leave is subject to command approval, and requested leave may be changed or denied.
For that reason, military parenting plans should distinguish between requested leave and approved leave. A servicemember may need to give the other parent advance notice that leave has been requested while also making clear that travel or parenting-time arrangements are not final until the leave is actually approved.
The plan should also address what happens when TDY/TAD overlaps with holidays, birthdays, school breaks, or summer parenting time. Depending on the family, it may make sense to provide alternative parenting time when approved leave becomes available rather than requiring the servicemember to forfeit substantial parenting time because of a temporary military assignment.
Flexibility, however, should work both ways. The nonmilitary parent and the children also need predictability. A well-drafted plan should therefore establish reasonable notice requirements and deadlines for confirming whether requested parenting time will actually occur.
PCS Orders and Permanent Duty Stations: Long-Distance Military Parenting Plans
A Permanent Change of Station (PCS) is fundamentally different from deployment or TDY/TAD. Instead of temporarily sending the servicemember away, PCS orders relocate the servicemember to a new permanent duty station.
That new duty station could be in another state or even another country. For example, a Navy parent may receive orders to Japan. An Army parent may receive orders to Germany. A servicemember stationed in Georgia today may be ordered to California, Virginia, Texas, Hawaii, or somewhere else entirely during the life of a parenting plan. However, notably, a PCS is not a deployment and does allow for parenting time, including extended parenting time.
When PCS orders make the existing parenting schedule impracticable, the family may effectively become a long-distance parenting family. The parenting plan should anticipate that possibility rather than leaving every issue unresolved until orders arrive.
What Should a Long-Distance Military Parenting Plan Include?
A military parenting plan can include a long-distance framework addressing:
- When the servicemember must notify the other parent after receiving PCS orders;
- When and how copies of orders or other appropriate documentation must be provided;
- What parenting schedule applies if the parents no longer live close enough to exercise the regular schedule;
- Allocation of summer vacation, winter break, spring break, Thanksgiving, and other school holidays;
- Whether the long-distance parent receives extended blocks of parenting time rather than shorter, more frequent periods;
- Transportation arrangements, including who books airfare and who takes the child to and from the airport;
- How airfare and other transportation expenses will be allocated;
- Whether children may travel as unaccompanied minors and at what age;
- Notice and itinerary requirements for travel;
- Regular communication between the child and the non-custodial parent;
- How holidays and birthdays will be handled; and
- What happens if the servicemember later receives orders returning him or her to the same geographic area as the child.
For OCONUS assignments, additional issues will need to be addressed, including passports, international airfare, travel documentation, communication across significant time-zone differences, and the practical realities of transporting children internationally.
What Else Should a Military Parenting Plan Include?
Military orders are only part of the equation. The best military parenting plans also address the smaller logistical issues that often become major sources of conflict.
For example, the plan should clearly explain what constitutes sufficient notice of orders and what information must actually be shared. If formal orders are not yet available, the plan can address whether the servicemember must provide other written confirmation when reasonably available and then supplement that information once official orders are issued.
The plan should also address make-up parenting time. Military parents can miss weekends, holidays, birthdays, and school events because of duties they cannot simply get away from. Rather than leaving the parents to negotiate every missed weekend after the fact, the parenting plan should establish when make-up time is appropriate, how it is requested, and whether it must be exercised within a particular period.
The plan should also address transportation and cost allocation. When military service creates substantial travel, the parents should know who is responsible for purchasing tickets, providing itineraries, transporting children, and paying the resulting expenses.
Communication provisions should be realistic. A deployed parent may not be able to promise a FaceTime call every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. A better provision should allow for reasonable communication as operational circumstances permit while also requiring the custodial parent to reasonably facilitate that communication.
Military families should also consider how the parenting plan interacts with the servicemember’s Family Care Plan. A military Family Care Plan and a court-ordered parenting plan are not interchangeable.
Finally, the plan should establish what happens when orders are extended, shortened, canceled, or changed. Military schedules frequently change after families have already begun planning around them. The parenting plan should explain the parents’ obligations to communicate those changes and how the parenting schedule adjusts as a result.
Drafting a Georgia Military Parenting Plan for the Orders You Don’t Have Yet
Military families cannot control what orders they will receive, where the servicemember will be stationed or deployed, or even know for certain when they will come home.
They can control how much uncertainty those events create for their children.
A parenting plan drafted specifically for a military family should distinguish among deployment, mobilization, TDY/TAD, and PCS orders because each creates different parenting issues. It should establish notice requirements, temporary schedules, communication expectations, make-up parenting time, leave provisions, transportation responsibilities, long-distance schedules, and a clear process for returning to the ordinary parenting schedule.
The objective is not to draft a parenting plan for every military assignment that could possibly occur. It is to create a plan flexible enough to accommodate military service while remaining specific enough that both parents know what happens when the unexpected orders arrive.
The best time to address military orders in a parenting plan is before you have them.
