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Crouch was the legal residential caretaker; this was only supposed to be temporary. What had changed? She wasn't a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or an abusive mother.

Her only misstep, it seems, was answering the call to serve her country.

Crouch and an unknown number of others among the 140,000-plus single parents in uniform fight a war on two fronts: For the nation they are sworn to defend, and for the children they are losing because of that duty.

A federal law called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is meant to protect them by staying civil court actions and administrative proceedings during military activation. They can't be evicted. Creditors can't seize their property. Civilian health benefits, if suspended during deployment, must be reinstated.

And yet service members' children can be _ and are being _ taken from them after they are deployed.

Some family court judges say that determining what's best for a child in a custody case is simply not comparable to deciding civil property disputes and the like; they have ruled that family law trumps the federal law protecting servicemembers. And so, in many cases when a soldier deploys, the ex-spouse seeks custody, and temporary changes become lasting.

Even some supporters of the federal law say it should be changed _ that soldiers should be assured that they can regain custody of children after they return.

"Now, they've got a great argument when Johnny comes marching home that the child should remain where they are, even though it was a temporary order," says Lt. Col. Steve Elliott, a judge advocate with the Oklahoma National Guard, referring to non-deployed parents.

Military mothers and fathers, meanwhile, speak of birthdays missed. Bonds, once strong, weakened. Returning from duty not to joyful reunions but to endless hearings.

They are people like Marine Cpl. Levi Bradley, helping to fight the insurgency in Fallujah, Iraq, at the same time he battles for custody of his son in a Kansas family court.

Like Sgt. Mike Grantham of the Iowa National Guard, whose two kids lived with him until he was mobilized to train troops after 9/11.

Like Army Reserve Capt. Brad Carlson, fighting for custody of his American-born children in a foreign land after his marriage crumbled while he was deployed to the Middle East and his European wife refused to return to the States.

And like Eva Crouch, who spent two years and some $25,000 pushing her case through the Kentucky courts.

"I'd have spent a million," she says. "My child was my life ... I go serve my country, and I come back and have to go through hell and high water."

In the midst of World War II, back in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the soldiers' relief law should be "liberally construed to protect those who have been obliged to drop their own affairs to take up the burdens of the nation."

Shielding soldiers, after all, would allow them "to devote their entire energy" to the nation's defense, as the law itself states.

But in child custody cases, the opposite often happens.

"The minute these guys are getting deployed, the other parent is going, `I can do whatever I want now,'" says Jean Ann Uvodich, an attorney who represented Bradley. "If you have an ex who wants to take advantage, they can and will. The obstacle is that the judge needs to respect the law."

Bradley had already joined the Marines, and his young wife, Amber, was a junior in high school when their son Tyler came along in September 2003. With Bradley in training, Amber and the baby lived with Bradley's mother, Starleen, in Ottawa, Kan.

When the marriage fell apart two years later, Bradley filed for divorce and Amber signed a parenting plan granting him sole custody of Tyler and agreeing that the boy would live with Starleen while Bradley was on duty.

In August 2005, Bradley deployed to Iraq. A month later, Amber sought to void the agreement and obtain residential custody of Tyler. She didn't fully understand what she had signed, she said later.

Bradley learned of the petition in Fallujah, after calling his mom's house one night to say hello to his son. He was infuriated.

He worked during the day as a mechanic with the 8th Communications Battalion, then headed back to the barracks and, because of the time difference, waited until midnight to call his mother to hear the latest from court.

"My mind wasn't where it was supposed to be," he says. And the distraction cost him. One day he rolled a Humvee he was test-driving. Though he wasn't injured, Bradley was reprimanded.

Uvodich sought a stay under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which provides for a minimum 90-day delay in proceedings upon application by an active duty service member. She argued that Bradley had a right to be present to testify.

But the judge refused to postpone the case, saying he didn't believe it was subject to the federal law because "this Court has a continuing obligation to consider what's in the best interest of the child," court records show.

After a November 2005 hearing, the judge awarded temporary physical custody to Amber. Last summer, that order was made permanent.

Bradley, now 22, is stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., awaiting his second deployment to Iraq later this year. He gets to Kansas on leave for about two weeks every six months, and sees Tyler for four days at a time.

"I fought the best I could," he says. "The act states: Everything will be put on hold until I'm able to get back. It doesn't happen. I found out the hard way."

Oregon Circuit Court Judge Dale Koch, president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, said that as state court judges, those deciding custody cases are obligated to follow their family codes _ and "in most states there is language that says the primary interest is the best interest of the child."

"We recognize the competing interests," he says. "You don't want to penalize a parent because they've served their country. On the other hand ... you don't want to penalize the child."

But what does "best interest" really mean? Koch mentions factors such as stability and considering who has been the child's main emotional provider, parameters that conflict directly with military service. So how do you balance those things against upholding a deployed parent's civil rights? When, too, should a temporary change mean just that?

This is only an Excerpt and about half the article.

Read the entire article at Huffington Post