Veteran fighting to regain custody of children after being deployed

[Operator 1,925]

It really surprises me that this situation got as far down the road as it did. No matter where I was deployed in the world I was never out of contact with my family for more than 3 or 4 weeks. The article makes it sound like she only realized what was up after she was back and being discharged. Unless she was operating in some extreme conditions would she be out of touch with home for long periods of time.

Every command that I was ever in had a ridiculously robust family communication system in place. Wives used to complain that the command watched them too closely while we were deployed and I know many folks who were sent home if things got off track, especially single parents.

Somethings not clicking for me with this story

[eieio 1,594]

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Military Mom Returns From War to Discover She Must Fight for Custody of Kids

Beth Greenfield

Senior Writer

Yahoo Parenting

August 18, 2015

Amanda Hurst, mother of two, was deployed overseas for four years and returned home to find she had a custody battle on her hands. (Photo: News 13)

A Florida military veteran who served overseas in both Iraq and Afghanistan has returned home to find herself in another fight — this time for the custody of her two children, ages 14 and 15.

“I want my kids back,” Amanda Hurst of Orange City told Bay News 9. “I want to be with my kids. I’ve missed so much of their lives serving my country that I don’t want to miss any more.” (UPDATE: At a court hearing on Wednesday, it was determined that Hurst would regain custody of her children, and that she could be reunited with them as soon as next week.)

STORY:Dad Battling for Custody of Kids Who Were Locked Up for Refusing to See Him

Hurst’s attorney, Brad Sherman, tells Yahoo Parenting that Hurst “went into the service to gain control over her life.” She was still married at the time to her second husband and the father of her children, and they all lived together at her first duty station, Fort Drum, until her first deployment to Iraq in 2009. “I was scared, I’m not going to lie,” she tells Yahoo Parenting about being sent overseas.

While in Iraq, Hurst was notified about a “family situation” involving her then-husband, and had to return home on emergency leave, which gave her two weeks to figure out who would be responsible for her children while she finished her deployment. Her husband was “not stable” (and “in and out of jail,” Sherman notes), and they soon split. Hurst decided that her kids would remain in the temporary care of Hurst’s stepmom before returning to Iraq, where she was told she’d be redeployed to Afghanistan within the year.

“I chose to stay in the military because as a single mom, it was a way for me to provide for them,” she says. She added that she kept them with her stepmom the whole time because “they needed stability,” although it was “a hard decision to make.”

But between that time and Hurst’s return home in 2013, Sherman says, the stepmom became estranged from some family members, took the children, and moved to New Jersey without legal permission. There, the children needed emergency mental-health services because of extreme behavioral issues and wound up in the care of the state. They remain in foster care.

[Rob L 3,811]

On the other hand, she might have been lied to about being deployed. Most folks who join the Army don't know that EVERYONE is going to get deployed now.

Technically its not a lie if our leaders truly believed at the time