Military Child Custody And Child Support Enforcement Battles

NC Fathers is currently seeking information on NC military child custody and child support enforcement issues experienced by those serving at Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, and other military installations throughout the State. As an organization of non-custodial families, including everyone in the extended family, we believe the time has come for the courts to focus on less division and the practice of dividing parents into significantly unequal halves which we believe is causing extreme chaos in families and for children. If you are a NC military service member, be it Marine Corp, Navy, Army, Coast Guard, or Air Force we encourage you to join our MAILING LIST and FACEBOOK PAGE to give us your knowledge and insights as our organization focuses primarily on the civilian family courts. We acknowledge that there are significant challenges experienced by NC military personnel when it comes to child custody and child support enforcement issues that are not a factor in the civilian world, so we need your insights. Using the comment section located at the end of this article, we encourage non-custodial families to convey this information to us so that other families in non-custodial military families can learn about your experiences and hopefully unite around a central organization who can take you from occasional visitor to your children to that of equal parent. It should be noted that NC Fathers IS NOT a law firm and nothing about this article should be taken as legal advise. If you are in the military and facing a child custody battle or child support enforcement issue, you are advised NOT to rely on information in this article and seek competent legal advise from a licensed attorney. Moreover, we encourage you to share this article with other friends and family on sites like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

Much of the inspiration for this article came from the SSGT Brandon Parsons incident and after receiving contact today from a military service member for which we had little answers for in his quest to navigate family law here in North Carolina.

THIS IS IMPERATIVE TO READ!

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Before we get to our section where we encourage you to answer questions we have for you, we do want to touch on three issues that many in North Carolina are not aware of and they are issues that are huge driving factors in child custody and child support enforcement not only for civilian Fathers, but also military Fathers.

• First, military Fathers are a gold mine for the State of NC (and all states), and here is why. Under the legislation that started child support enforcement, a huge chunk of this legislation is devoted to funding for this federal enforcement program. Under Section 458 of the Social Security Act Title IV-D program, for every dollar collected in child support, the State of NC will get back 66 cents to a dollar that they can then use to replenish social services programs. This means for a non-custodial Father who pays $700 a month in child support, the State of NC reports that money to the government and gets back anywhere from $400-$700 a month to pay for Welfare, food stamps, TANF, WIC, and other related programs. Our organization believes that the State of NC has become dependent on this federal money, and therefore needs a tremendous amount of non-custodial fathers triggering this federal money rather than equal fathers with equal access to their children and who support their children directly as a parent. We also suspect that this is why visitation orders by Judges have remained pretty much the same in the past 50 years despite overwhelming data that shows where children do much better in life when they have two active parents. In short, a father paying $700 a month in child support is helping the State of NC give food stamps to about 2-3 low income custodial parents. And we say custodial parents because non-custodial parents are not eligible for food assistance, housing assistance, medical/dental assistance, educational and job assistance, utility assistance, and other programs. If you get in trouble financially due to some unforeseen issue, you get carted off to prison while the custodial parent has government help.

The reason that we say military fathers in child custody battles are a gold mine for the State of NC is that because of your deployment status, you are very much given lower visitation awards by the courts which increases your child support which triggers more Title IV-D money.

• It seems daily that we get contact from Fathers who tell us that their ex-wife or girlfriend has alleged domestic violence on them and they are appalled by the fact that this allegation has proceeded as far as it has especially when there is no evidence or witnesses to alleged abuse. What military fathers in child custody and child support enforcement matters need to know is that a false allegations of domestic violence as a tactical advantage in family court matters has become routine and should be expected. In NC, because of how domestic violence is prosecuted, there does NOT have to be any evidence of domestic violence or witnesses to have you arrested and prosecuted successfully.  More on this HERE and HERE.
• Under NC law, if you impregnate a Woman whom you are NOT married to, you have ZERO legal rights to the child and she can adopt the child out without your consent. In fact, under NC law, she does not even have to tell you that she is pregnant and the burden is still on you to legitimate the child within a VERY SHORT window. But that begs the question, how do you legitimate a child you were not aware you have? According to contact we get daily, we see this issue arising frequently by military personnel at Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg, Cherry Point, and Pope Field (Air Force Base). According to the latest Census, 40% of United States children are born to unmarried parents. More on this HERE.
• Paternity Fraud is rampant in the military because of your federal benefits, and we can not think of one situation where a Judge has help a Mother accountable for this, and there is certainly no law governing it. If any Woman on this planet presents herself to child support enforcement and names you as the Father, you will be put into the system no questions asked and will have to spend thousands of dollars in attorney fees to have this corrected. The hope here is that you never question it and the Mother and child can enjoy their federal benefits. More on this HERE.

NC Military Child Custody and Child Support Enforcement Request For Information

In this section, we are encouraging military fathers and their families to help answer questions we have about child custody and child support enforcement issues.

As we stated earlier, we believe the NC family courts are a dangerous place for children and families because of how they operate. Under NC law, there is NO joint custody or shared parenting. This means one parent will be rewarded as custodian of a child and will have access to 8 major social services programs and tax incentives, and the other parent will be marginalized to the role of visitor and payment provider who can not receive any State help should tough times hit. And, we are all well aware how much lawyers make financially when parents fight for 18 years. With this in mind, we have concerns that in the military world, where it is very much assured that a Father will not get custody of a child, that you are a highly valuable target for Women who have their sites set on State and Military benefits.

Does the military provide any education on this matter when you enter the armed forces? Do female soldier with civilian spouses lose custody of their children in child custody battles, and are they held to the same standard as you because of deployment probability?

In being directed to Craigslist today by someone who contacted us, we were appalled by the numbers of post specifically targeting military Men, but we found none for Men targeting military Women. Do you know of any fellow soldiers who responded to one of these ads, became involved, conception of a child happened, and shortly after, she disappeared only to resurface when she wanted child support and military benefits?

I’m assuming here that this individual wanted a GYST or higher because pay and benefits increase dramatically after this rank? Do you think that proof of this post would help in a custody battle should you have been one of the unfortunate ones that got hooked in to this? Absolutely not!

As a military Father please never make the assumption that ads like the ones above will play in your favor in a child custody battle because these individuals will not be held accountable and you most certainly will. In fact, we suspect that the State of NC loves these ads because it clearly is a sure fire disaster waiting to happen which will undoubtedly lead to child support enforcement court and more Title IV-D money.

What are some other areas we did not discuss in this article that specifically relates to military personnel that you have discovered in the NC family courts? Do you feel like you got the short end of the stick compared to civilian Fathers who are not in the military?

Is NC one of the States that prevents a Mother from filing for custody of a child while the Father is deployed overseas? If not, what does this say about Fathers Rights and the respect our legislators have for military Fathers? And if so, did it really matter because once you came home she got exactly what she wanted in the courts anyway?

Does the military in North Carolina do in counseling of male soldiers when entering boot camp as it relates to child custody and child support?

9/2015 – Updated tags on military child support and custody NC.