My family is about to have the same issue. My husband will deploy in June and as a member of the Air Force, he will luckily only be gone for six months. We have been at our current duty station (TX) for two years now with his son living with us only interrupted by his ex-wife's summer and holiday visitation. She is also Active Duty Air Force and is stationed in Florida and has been for the past three years. She is now trying to get orders to be stationed at the same base as my husband. In their custody plan, she is supposed to obtain custody while my husband is deployed and we are simply heartbroken and desperate to find a way around this. Of course, the situation would be better if she were at least living in the same town so that our son's school schedule and extra-curricular activities are not interrupted. But as I previously said, she has never had even the weekend visitations because she has lived so far away and we are more than willing to let her see him as much as possible (if she does in fact get stationed here) but we feel it would be better for our son to sleep in and wake up in the bed and the house he is used to and to MAINTAIN as normal of a schedule as possible while my husband - his father is gone. Are we crazy for feeling this way? What would anyone else suggest? We have not discussed the deployment with his ex yet because she was also tasked with a deployment for the same time as my husband and we're seeing how that situation works out first. But she refuses to recognize me as "HER son"'s care-taker and would most-likely not allow me visitation. My husband and I were engaged but not married nor living together during his last deployment over three years ago and she would not even return my phone calls when I would call to speak with "our" child. I fear the worst...

Its not a good idea to piggyback your question on someone else's. This can lead to confusion. You should start a new thread. So I've moved your question to its own thread.