Life as a military spouse comes with countless unknowns and hardships. I anticipated some of those hardships when I married a man who was about to join the military -- the PCS moves, possible deployments and raising children in a transient environment. I had no idea that when marriages end in divorce, those challenges create an entirely new, unique one: custody in military life.
After 13 years as a military spouse, I became skilled at doing things on my own, including parenting. Like most service members, my then-husband was gone a lot, and as we had one child and then a second, most of the parenting fell to me. So when I got divorced, I naively assumed life as a single mother would be more of the same: that I would continue doing most of the parenting myself.
I quickly learned that parenting after a military divorce involves so much more than simply parenting alone.
According to reports using U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data, the military has the highest divorce rate of any career field. The divorce rate for active-duty service members sits at about 4.8%, with enlisted service members more likely to divorce than officers, and female service members divorcing at a higher rate than males.
Despite how little guidance I was able to find about military divorce while I was going through it, the numbers don’t lie. Military divorce is so common that I easily found a law firm that not only specialized in military divorce, but also worked exclusively with women, whether as the service member or the spouse. But there were so many military divorce attorneys in my city, I could have consulted at least a dozen other firms. Clearly, these attorneys are staying in business for a reason.
The aftermath of these divorces affects everyone in the family, including children.
While my divorce decree assigned precisely who the kids would be with during major holidays, my ex-husband and I relied on a cordial co-parenting relationship to figure out the day-to-day. We had to. Between his unpredictable work-related travel and our agreement to make modifications for special events, such as grandparent visits and vacations, regular communication and flexibility were required to avoid courtrooms and to do what was best for the children.
At first, our kids, who were 5 and 9 years old at the time, spent Friday evening through Sunday night at their father’s house and the school week with me. My ex-husband and I lived 20 minutes away from each other and shared driving duties. It was a tough adjustment for everyone initially, with miscommunications and forgotten sneakers, but soon enough, the kids got used to the weekly packing and unpacking of their suitcases, and I adjusted to having eerily quiet weekends.
All four of us had finally figured out the custody rhythm when my ex-husband got new orders. I’m not sure why I was surprised that he got one-year orders to Washington, D.C., when we currently lived in Virginia Beach or why it never crossed my mind that one day he might have to PCS even further than the four-hour drive he was doing to commute back to see the kids on the weekends. I think I was so busy figuring out divorced life that it didn’t occur to me that even though I was no longer married to a man in the military, I still felt like I was married to the military.
The new orders forced a new custody schedule, with the kids going to his house Saturday mornings through Monday mornings. Even that small one-day shift changed the entire routine we’d all worked hard to settle into, including the switch that now the kids had to wake up earlier on Monday mornings because their father was driving them 20 minutes to school instead of strolling to the bus stop with me. It meant sometimes they were late for school because of rush-hour traffic. It meant my work-from-home morning was disrupted when my ex came to my apartment to drop off the kids’ suitcases. It meant months of adjusting yet again.
My relief that those one-year orders were wrapping up was quickly replaced by shock when my ex-husband got new three-year orders. I had stayed in Virginia Beach instead of moving closer to family, because I hoped the next orders would bring my children’s father back to the area so we could resume the original custody schedule. But I was very wrong. Those three-year orders were in Hawaii.
My ex proposed that the children stay with me in Virginia during the school year and then spend 10 weeks in Hawaii during the summers. I was devastated. I was fine with basically having full custody of the kids for most of the year. After all, as a military spouse, I often spent months at a time solo-parenting. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was being apart from my son and daughter for more than two months. My ex was practiced in the art of being separated from the kids. I wasn’t.
With no other options, the kids went to Hawaii for two summers while I stayed in Virginia Beach. Then, after three years of trying to keep my ex involved in the kids’ lives during the school year, he got orders again, this time back to the Hampton Roads area. I loved knowing I wouldn’t have to put my kids on an airplane to see their father, but once again, we all had to adjust to a new normal, with weekly packing and unpacking of suitcases. Even this semblance of stability and routine was interrupted with a yearlong deployment, when I once again parented full time.
My ex is now retired, and my kids are young adults, both in college with no need for custody schedules anymore. Their home base is with me in Virginia, and the military no longer dictates when I can see them. Finally, more than a decade after my divorce, my marriage to the military and the minefield of custody arrangements are behind me.
Military families are used to making adjustments and embracing flexibility, but when divorce divides a military family, those skills are just as essential. And I’m thankful for those skills I learned as a military spouse, because I needed them to help me navigate life when I no longer was one.
-- Heather Sweeney, a content editor at Military.com, is the author of “Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage,” coming Oct. 28, 2025.
