As the wife of a National Guardsman my life is usually lived in the civilian world; my husband has a civilian job as a union carpenter, we don’t live on post, I was one of the few that had any real contact with other family members of my husband’s unit due to the fact that I had been involved with the FRG for several years and the nearest commissary is over two hours away. As one can imagine I was less than prepared to have my life turned inside out when my husband was deployed to Iraq in October of 2004.
I was used to my husband coming through the door every single night at the same time and the only time my husband and I slept apart would be during qualifications weekend and summer camp (AT). Before my husband left those two weeks felt like forever. In May of 2004 my husband transferred to a new unit that was on alert. After many years of knowing my soldiers and my families intimately, I was thrust into a new unit with people I did not know with the reality that my husband would be deployed before I had a chance to really acclimate myself to this new unit. I read everything that was handed to me about deployment and I went online and researched until I couldn’t see the monitor trying to figure out what I was supposed to do while my husband was in a combat zone.
What I can say with a great deal of certainty now is that when my husband left, I was anything but prepared. The pamphlets that are handed out and the information on the net is not bad information but it is lacking a great deal of reality in my opinion.
I had the information about Tricare and pay, I knew who my point of contact was, I even knew how to contact the Red Cross and what information I needed to have on hand when I did so if there was a family emergency but what I didn’t know was how to deal with all of those little surprises that nobody thought about in the meantime.
My first surprise involved my husband’s children and their mother who had decided not to take her children to the local Coast Guard station and get their military ID’s in order to get medical treatment for the kids. In the custody order my husband is required to have medical coverage on the children. After going several rounds with his ex, I finally sent a certified letter with all the information and additional paperwork she might need in order to get this done. When this didn’t work, I took my power of attorney for my husband and went down to the friend of the court: my power of attorney wasn’t good enough for them to talk to me because it involved the children and I needed a notarized statement from my husband giving me the authority to act on his behalf in matters involving his children. Luckily my husband was still in Fort Dix and was able to fax this document to me the same day.
Of course the next problem that came up was child support: My husband’s ex had decided to go down to the friend of the court and let them know he was being deployed and gave them an address to the National Guard Headquarters in Michigan to send the support order. The problem with this is that the support order has to go to DFAS or the support is not paid. After getting my husband’s first LES statement, I saw there was a problem and started making phone calls, this took me six weeks and in the meantime I got nightly phone calls from the ex about her money. My husband had taken care of the support orders from his end before he deployed but his ex taking matters into her own hands created nothing but confusion. If you are dealing with child custody or support issues, make sure that you have something in hand that gives your the very specific authority to deal with any and all matters regarding your soldier’s children. Double check with Friend Of The Court before deployment that they have the correct information on file for any support or custody issue that may arise. While there are laws in place to protect a deployed soldier, each state has their set of rules so be sure that you know exactly what your soldier’s rights are and if you are not sure contact your JAG office in advance.
Helping Military Children Deal With Deployment
Making Deployments A Little Easier