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The Military Parents
Alliance (MPA) works to
publicize and legislatively
address the many problems
and injustices military
parents face.
The Military
Parents Alliance supports
California’s
SB 1082,
Michigan's House Bill
5100/Senate Bill 714, and
other legislation to help
protect military parents.
The
Military Parents Alliance
also supports the efforts to
address these problems both
at the state and federal
level by veterans groups
such as the
National Association of
County Veterans Service
Officers, the Armed
Forces Retirees Association
of California, the
California Association of
County Veterans Service
Officers, and the
American Retirees
Association.
Laws granting deployed
soldiers special protections
against civil legal actions
date back to the Civil War.
However, few of these
protections extend to family
courts and family law. As a
result, military personnel's
service to their country
often creates the conditions
under which they can become
victims of terrible
injustices. As America's
military commitments in Iraq
and Afghanistan persist, it
is important to address the
family law issues which
military parents face.
Because of the family law
system and its bias against
breadwinner parents, some
military personnel's service
costs them their children.
For many, their
participation and meaningful
role in their children’s
lives ends—often
permanently--the day they
were deployed.
For parents who serve as
reservists, a knotty problem
in the child support system
can turn decent, loving
parents into deadbeats and
outlaws. Also, deployed men
are often falsely named as
fathers of children and at
times are obligated to pay
child support for children
whom DNA tests have proven
are not theirs.
As family law attorney
Jeffery M. Leving
notes, "military parents are
often targets looking for an
arrow."
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