A new bill has been introduced that would protect deployed military service men and women in regards to child custody and visitation arrangements.

HR 4469 would prevent family courts from permanently changing or amending a child custody order while a service member is deployed overseas. If custody was temporarily changed while the parent was overseas, the court must reverse the change once the service member returns home from their deployment.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Michael Turner from Ohio, says the main objective of the legislation is to prevent the courts from using the deployment or the possibility of deployment against a service member when determining the best interest of a child in a custody case.

Turner’s bill has been met with support from both the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW) and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). Justin Brown of VFW expressed his belief that a person’s decision to serve their country should not reflect negatively on them during any judicial proceeding, and that although deployments are difficult on families, service members should not be punished for their deployments. He said “in most instances, the decision to deploy is not the service member's, it’s our government’s. We should not allow our government to then punish service members in juridical custody disputes.” And Tim Embree of IAVA says it is cruel and damaging to deployed service members to make them worry about child custody issues while they are fighting overseas.