By Brianna Keilar

(CNN) — Christina Fuller is an American former military spouse living without legal residency in southern Spain, where a custody fight has kept her and her son for years. When her family arrived near the Strait of Gibraltar on US military orders, her son was two. Now, he’s nearly 10.

Fuller’s marriage to a US Navy sailor assigned to a guided-missile destroyer at Naval Station Rota fell apart soon after the family arrived in 2019.

When her husband filed for divorce in 2021, a Spanish court barred either parent from taking their child out of the country without the other’s permission. The next year, the Navy ordered her husband back to the US as the divorce was finalized and Fuller appealed a Spanish custody order.

She eventually won full physical custody and rights similar to legal custody in the US, but she still had to get permission from a judge or her now ex-husband to move their son. By then her son’s American passport had also expired, leaving them stuck in Spain.

Fuller says she supports her family by scrapping together an income from this odd job and that – she’s a “buscavida,” she says, what the Spanish call a hustler.

“I never came to Spain intending to make it my permanent home,” Fuller told CNN. “I don’t want to feel like a prisoner in another country any more simply because I followed military orders overseas.”

When a marriage falls apart, military spouses living overseas can find themselves stranded in foreign countries and bound by foreign custody judgments in their courts — even when those involved are American citizens who moved abroad on US orders. Spouses already made financially vulnerable by years of relocations can be left navigating unfamiliar courts, hiring lawyers in two countries and fighting simply to bring their children home.

Spouses caught in foreign courts have been largely invisible to almost everyone in military circles, including each other. But in August the issue burst into public view when the wife of a Marine Corps officer went viral with an online plea, warning that she and her children could be trapped indefinitely in Germany.

Jamie Lenio said her marriage was ending partly because her husband had an affair with a superior officer, a one-star general — a claim substantiated by a US Africa Command inspector general report obtained by CNN.

Within 48 hours, the video had drawn nearly 500,000 views, more than 30,000 likes and 2,300 comments.

Spouses facing similar circumstances contacted Lenio, leading to an informal network of women, and at least one man, who shared their stories, including on social media, in the hope they, too, can get some help.

Soon after, the military ordered Lenio’s husband to return to the US, paving the way for Lenio and her kids to return as well, before a German court could take up the family’s case. Earlier this month, Lenio arrived in Southern California with her children.

When foreign courts take control

CNN spoke to more than a dozen current or former spouses of active-duty service members, Defense Department employees or US government contractors who said they were living overseas against their wishes with their children — or had returned to the United States without them — after their marriages ended. All but one of the spouses CNN spoke to were women.

They all described debilitating financial hardship as they fought their legal battles overseas. Many racked up heavy debt, ruined their credit or relied on food banks just to feed their children. Multiple spouses said they skipped meals to get by.

“It’s heartbreaking, but it’s unfortunately the reality,” said Gilbert “Joey” Comley, a retired Army judge advocate who has represented service members and veterans in custody cases involving foreign courts. “Someone always has to have jurisdiction over child custody.”

Once a child becomes integrated into daily life abroad, courts may treat that country as the child’s “habitual residence” under the 1980 Hague Convention on international child abduction and the US law implementing it.

Legally, that can outweigh citizenship or the fact that the family moved only because of military employment, Comley said.

CNN spoke to military spouses based in Germany, Spain, the UK and Japan, all of whom expressed surprise at having an obscure, international treaty play a role in child custody during and after a divorce. Some said they were blindsided by the power of the foreign court — no matter the country they were in. And they all described incorrect or conflicting guidance from US military officials.

Ahead of deployments or overseas tours, military families often contemplate potential life-changing events, including the death of a service member or illness of a spouse in a structured Family Contingency Plan.

A number of spouses said they wished the military had armed their families with more information so they could incorporate an agreement on how they would approach custody in the event of a divorce overseas.

In response to questions for this story, individual service branches initially directed CNN to the Pentagon for information about the guidance families receive from the military when navigating divorce and child custody in foreign courts. A Pentagon spokesperson then directed CNN back to the individual service branches before highlighting a series of webpages on Military OneSource, a DOD-funded website for military personnel and families. None of the links provide direct support for navigating divorce or child custody in foreign legal systems, a reflection of the dearth of official information available to families before they may be educating themselves in the middle of a crisis.

The Air Force flagged an article that mentioned military divorce overseas, but only that it “can be more complicated than if the couple filed within a state. A US court may not recognize a divorce filed overseas, so it’s best to file in the United States.” It briefly addressed physical property but not child custody.

The Navy, like other service branches, said it doesn’t track how many families are in divorce or child custody proceedings in foreign courts but that it does give them briefings before they go overseas to “ensure service members and their dependents clearly understand host-nation jurisdiction, legal protections, and administrative responsibilities while serving abroad.”

Spokespeople for the Marine Corps and the Air Force outlined a number of resources available to military families, including legal-assistance services but with a significant caveat: they would need a private local lawyer to represent them in court.

‘A nightmare every day’

Across the cases CNN reviewed, a common pattern emerged: The higher-earning partner had an incentive to remain overseas — whether as a service member nearing retirement and eyeing a military contracting job, or as a civilian employee or contractor able to extend an at times lucrative posting long after the marriage ended. Those employment opportunities provide legal status to work in host countries.

The accompanying spouses who were stranded abroad — or felt forced to leave without their children — uniformly described custody proceedings that favored the higher-earning partner, who could afford stronger legal representation and argue that a steadier income left them better positioned to provide for the children.

“It gets expensive,” Comley explained, because finding a fair resolution requires retaining a lawyer in the US and another in the foreign country.

For many military spouses, financial independence is elusive, even more so overseas where their job opportunities are further limited by visa restrictions on where they can work. Moving every two to three years makes finding a job or maintaining a career difficult as they contort their lives around their spouse’s military service demands.

Though half of active-duty spouses have attained at least a bachelor’s degree, the military spouse unemployment rate is about four times higher and they have a median income 42% lower than civilian spouses, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.

Overseas, employment obstacles multiply as a spouse’s legal status extends through their military-connected partner. Once they lose that protection, they have to find an alternate justification for remaining and working in the country while they fight for custodial rights, a costly endeavor.

Military spouses divorcing in foreign courts can also lose out on a major marital asset: US military retirement benefits. Foreign courts may decide divorce and custody but generally do not have jurisdiction to divide those benefits as a US court can, leaving spouses little recourse if the service member refuses to share them voluntarily.

The legal fight often unfolds as an accompanying spouse loses practical support that made overseas life possible: base entry access to affordable shopping, post-office boxes and access to bank accounts or cars tied to the sponsoring spouse. Several CNN spoke with accrued significant credit card debt; one documented relying on a food bank and military-provided thrift-store vouchers.

Parents separated from children

Jose ‘Trey’ Gonzalez’s marriage deteriorated in 2023, soon after his family moved to Germany for his wife’s work with a Defense Department contractor. While a German court considered custody of their now-5-year-old son, Gonzalez’s immigration status linked to his wife expired and he left Germany. He saw his son briefly during a 2024 court hearing and visit in Stuttgart but says he has not seen him since.

“I felt like there had to be some kind of workaround because we’re all American,” Gonzalez told CNN from Florida.

“It’s been terrible. It’s been a nightmare every day. As long as the Germans have jurisdiction I have zero hope.”

In England, Air Force spouse Brandylyn Cohea is torn between staying or going in the wake of her husband filing for a divorce in the United Kingdom.

She fears being deported without her teenage son if she loses her status to work and live in the country. Meanwhile, she worries a court could rule unfavorably if she leaves. The Air Force briefly authorized her and her son to return to the US but they would have had to leave without their two beloved golden retrievers, who came from the US.

She’s working up to 55 hours a week while parenting alone, she says, receiving $1300 in child and spousal support per month.

“It’s really difficult to watch” other families leave, she says, choking up, “because I want to go home.”

A viral plea — and swift intervention

Since Lenio’s story gained national attention, military spouses facing divorce have increasingly seen public pressure as the only way to force action.

A number have taken their stories public, some appearing in social media videos. Lenio’s viral plea in August quickly reached the highest levels of the Navy Department.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, who oversees the Marine Corps and was recently nominated to permanently fill the role by President Donald Trump, responded publicly: “We hear you loud and clear. You and your family will be home soon.”

The next month, around the time of Cao’s nomination, the Marine Corps issued Lenio’s husband new orders, and she returned to the US with her children.

Lenio told CNN the video got her home. The Marine Corps said the move was underway before she went public, telling CNN it had already concluded the situation “would be best resolved in the US.”

But in short order, the Marine Corps and Navy made similar determinations in the cases of other families.

Several sources – spouses, service members and former military officials familiar with personnel decisions – said Lenio’s video was a clear catalyst.

During CNN’s reporting, another Marine Corps family facing divorce in Germany also received orders allowing them to return to the US after CNN asked the Pentagon about their situation.

Corina Acevedo, mother of four and the wife of a senior enlisted Marine, said her case began moving only after Lenio’s video. Earlier, a German court denied her the authority necessary to return to the US with her children. The Marine Corps would not discuss her case, but said every family’s circumstances and timeline are different.

‘Sucked into the German court system’

Foreign family court orders can also trump certain decisions by the US military.

Ashlee Gamble’s marriage to a Navy sailor fell apart in the summer of 2025 while the couple were living near Kaiserslautern, Germany with their two children. A German court spelled out a custody arrangement after Gamble filed, ultimately unsuccessfully, for the right to determine where her children would reside.

“You’re sucked into the German court system. And all of it is in German,” she said.

Last year, over her husband’s objections, the military granted a request for Gamble to return to the US with both children, but the German court would allow her to leave only with her eldest child. Her young son would remain in Germany with her husband.

Stars and Stripes first reported on the family earlier this month. Two days later, Gamble’s Navy-appointed legal advisor let her know the Navy had released orders to move her husband and family back to the US, more than a year after a military-provided clinical social worker first recommended Gamble return with the two children.

Gamble’s husband says the orders have upended his family’s lives in the middle of his children’s school year, and he questioned why the Navy would intervene in a private family matter.

“I think that civil matters should be handled by the civil courts and not have the military involved,” he told CNN, outlining what he sees as advantages for military spouses in the German court system.

“It’s going to cost them more in the US because here in Germany, if they can’t get a job, they’re provided access to a free lawyer for a civil case. Where in the US are you going to get a free divorce lawyer?”

But Gamble says her court-appointed lawyer is managing many cases besides hers and she is relieved to be leaving Germany and heading back to the US.

“I feel like military families have no business being in German courts unless someone broke a law. But when it comes to custody, this can’t keep happening.”

Even so, the German court order will cross the Atlantic with the family, dictating their custody arrangement unless or until the German court relinquishes jurisdiction.

Without a treaty change or a Pentagon-wide policy, commands and contractors retain broad discretion over whether a family can return home to pursue divorce and custody in an American court. Families described officials who were ill-informed or unwilling to intervene and others who were supportive and responsive but still unable to force a resolution once a foreign court became involved.

Efforts to bring attention to this specific issue have coincided with a broad new policy focus on military family struggles amid the Iran War and the early days of Trump’s Military Spouse Commission, a panel led by Jennifer Hegseth, wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The commission’s membership includes almost all of the spouses of the military’s top brass. The commission is tasked with, among other things, developing “policy recommendations to address … deployment-related support” and “improve the quality of life for military spouses while supporting the highest standard of military readiness,” according to the White House.

Building a life in Spain

Christina Fuller watched military interventions for other families from Spain.

“When I saw Jamie’s story come out and I saw the Secretary of the Navy saying ‘not on my watch,’ I thought, ‘OK, sir, let’s see what’s going to happen on your watch,’ because this has been happening for a long time,” she said.

Her ex-husband returned to Spain on military orders last year, she says, and now has brief regular visits and calls with their son.

However, Fuller is no longer a military dependent, limiting the Navy’s ability to resolve her case through new orders or an early return program. Her son remains a military dependent, though Fuller says he was unable to receive on-base health care for the years his father was in Hawaii.

An email Fuller provided from the naval hospital in Rota showed records incorrectly identifying the child as living in Hawaii with his father, who told CNN he included his son on his military orders.

He said it has been “extremely difficult” being separated from his son and “navigating different legal systems and military obligations presents significant challenges.”

Fuller has sought help from three congressional offices and the US consulate, but says she has been unable to obtain a US passport for her son without his father’s consent.

While she still wants to return to the US, for now she is building a life for her children: play dates, basketball practice, dance classes and birthday parties. Her son now has an American half-brother, and Fuller has learned Spanish while studying European law and the Hague Convention as she works to provide other families information on social media.

“Even if it’s too late to give me those years back, it is not too late to make sure somebody else doesn’t lose theirs.”

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