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Custody While Deployed — A Deployment Order Is Temporary, and the Burden Shifts Back on Return

Under the Military Parents Equal Protection Act, any order cutting a deploying parent’s custody or visitation must say deployment is the reason and must be entered as a temporary order. The court may hand the visitation to a family member, including a stepparent. On return, a hearing takes precedence and is set within 30 days — and it is the other parent who must show the old order should not come back.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

What it's worth: A temporary order rather than a permanent one, an expedited hearing within 30 days, and the burden on the other parent

There is no money in these sections. What they give is procedural: how the order is labelled, how fast it is heard, and who has to prove what.
The 30 days is the outer limit for setting the hearing on the returning parent’s motion, not a guarantee of a decision within 30 days.

Who is entitled to it

The Act is written around a parent or guardian who is deployed, or who has received written orders to deploy.
The protections attach to the deploying parent or guardian.
Your home is in Virginia.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

Deadline: On receipt of written deployment orders, and again on return

1Check that you fit the definition before anything else. §20-124.7 defines a deploying parent or guardian as a parent of a child under 18 whose parental rights have not been terminated, or a guardian of a child under 18, who is deployed or who has received written orders to deploy — and defines deployment as compliance with military orders to report for combat operations or other active service, naming the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Space Force, National Guard and any reserve component.
2Insist the order says why. §20-124.8 requires that any court order limiting previously ordered custodial or visitation rights because of deployment "shall specify the deployment as the basis for the order and shall be entered by the court as a temporary order". An order that omits the reason is much harder to unwind later.
3Ask about delegating your visitation rather than losing it. The court may delegate visitation to a family member, including a stepparent, with whom the child has a close and substantial relationship, on finding that the delegation is in the best interests of the child.
4Note that the delegation is self-limiting. It "shall terminate by operation of law upon the return of the deploying parent or guardian from deployment".
5File the motion as soon as you are back. On the returning parent’s motion to amend or review, §20-124.8 directs that the hearing "shall take precedence on the court’s docket" and "shall be set within 30 days of the filing of the motion".
6Know which way the burden points at that hearing. The non-deploying parent or guardian bears the burden of showing that reentry of the order in effect before the deployment is no longer in the child’s best interests. You are not re-litigating custody from scratch.
7If no order exists yet when the orders arrive, use §20-124.9. Petitions involving a deploying parent are to be identified as such and expedited under §20-108, and the court may conduct the hearing by telephonic communication system or by an electronic audio and video communication system where deployment prevents you appearing.
8Ask that the three contents in §20-124.10 be written into the order: that the non-deploying parent reasonably accommodate your leave schedule, that they facilitate telephonic and electronic mail contact with the child during deployment, and that you provide timely information about your leave schedule.

Form: A motion in the court that entered or would enter the custody or visitation order
File with: The juvenile and domestic relations district court or circuit court handling the matter
No renewal: Once granted it does not need renewing.

CorrectionA deployment-based custody order is temporary as a matter of law, not as a matter of the judge’s wording. §20-124.8 requires it to be entered as a temporary order and to name the deployment as its basis.

CorrectionOn return the burden sits with the other parent, not with you. They must show that putting the pre-deployment order back is no longer in the child’s best interests. Parents commonly return expecting to have to prove their own fitness again.

Worth knowingDelegating visitation to a stepparent or another close family member keeps the child’s side of the relationship alive during the absence, and the delegation ends automatically when you get back. It has to be in the child’s best interests, and the relationship has to be close and substantial.

Known gapNothing in these four sections was read as prohibiting a court from weighing past or possible future deployment in a best-interests determination. If that protection exists in Virginia it sits elsewhere — most likely in the best-interests factors — and that provision was not read this session.

Sources

Why only one source type: These are rules of court procedure rather than an administered programme, so there is no agency page behind them. All four sections of the chapter were read directly.

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.