AB 313, a Fathers and Families-inspired child custody bill to help protect military parents, has just been signed into law by Governor Brian Sandoval.
At Fathers and Families we receive many letters from divorced or separated military servicemembers with painful but preventable family law problems.
In Protecting parents who serve (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/1/11), Fathers and Families Executive Director Glenn Sacks laid out the case for AB 313 and SB 284, bills to address many of the problems faced by Nevada’s active duty and reserve service members.
The bills, sponsored by Assemblywoman Irene Bustamante Adams, D-Las Vegas, and Senator Don Gustavson, R-Sparks, are modeled in part on AB 2416, which we helped pass in California last year, and we worked with a Department of Defense Liaisons Office legislative representative on the bills prior to their introduction.
In the Review-Journal, Sacks writes:
There are six central reforms which advocates for military parents have been working to implement legislatively since 2005: prohibiting permanent custody orders for deployed parents; making temporary orders revert back after deployment; prohibiting deployment from being used as a factor in custody determination; allowing guardianship or visitation to be delegated when appropriate; holding expedited and/or electronic hearings for deployed parents; and extending military parent protections to National Guard and Reserves. AB313 and SB284 achieve all six of these objectives.
Since 2005, more than three dozen states have passed military parent child custody legislation. Nevada is not one of them.
No mother or father should ever be disadvantaged in a child custody or Family Court proceeding because they serve. With America fighting two wars and the divorce rate among military families running high, Nevada’s service members need AB313 and SB284.
Read the full piece here.