Marriage of U. and E.
Family Code section 3047 is intended to protect the parental rights of deployed service members and to promote the expeditious resolution of custody disputes in deployment situations.[1] The statute establishes a presumption that a service member returning from military service should regain his or her pre-deployment custody of a child, unless the court determines it is not in the child’s best interest.
The case before us illustrates the challenges faced by military parents upon their return home from serving their country. After protracted legal proceedings, the court ruled that E.U. (father) should lose primary care of his child due to father’s temporary deployment to Afghanistan, during which the child’s mother assumed primary custody. We hold the court erred by failing to enforce a court order which provided that father’s custody should be reinstated upon his return from military service, and by failing to provide the “fair, efficient, and expeditious process to resolve [the] child custody and visitation issue[]†intended by the Legislature when it enacted section 3047.
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