Situation: I'm living in Texas and plan to stay here to raise my child. I'm currently 6 months pregnant with a man who is in active duty military who might be redeploying in the spring/summer of 2008. I am due in early May. He has stated that he would be gone for 15 months tops. I'm currently married to him but am considering a divorce after the baby is born due to the lack of emotional, financial support, etc.. We are separated (in terms of we don't speak to each other on a regular basis due to overwhelming stressful fights I don't want to have while I'm pregnant.) The last time I spoke with him I raised the issue that I was considering a divorce. He agreed to a divorce. I then started to talk about possible custody rights that could happen, and he flipped out!
He is not from Texas and will probably move away from Texas after his time is served in the military. BUT his ideas of custody vs. mine ideas kind of hit home with me and made me very uncomfortable.
His custody ideas- He wants joint custody...Him being gone for 15 months he wants to come back and with the baby being about a year and some odd months old wants to start taking our son every summer to his place of residence (where ever that may be?..) He also wanted a few holidays out of the year to see him as well. I have major problems with my son being away from me for that long of a time. By all means I want him a part of my son's life as much as possible, but it kind of breaks my heart to think I could possibly be without my son for months at a time.
My custody ideas- I wanted primary physical custody- the son lives with me. AND joint legal custody- we both make decisions on religion, health care, etc...I would love for my current husband to be able to see him whenever possible, but I was thinking more along the lines of every other weekend visatation rights and split holidays, and my door would always be open for scheduling other times to visit. Me and my husband have come to not agree on anything. We are always fighting and he is very verbally abusive to me...I don't want my son to see any of this, and I'm very scared for the outcome.
After I told my husband about my ideas he changed his ideas to "It shouldn't be hard for me to get primary custody." So I know now that when the divorce and custody papers are filed it has a very big possiblity that it will go to court b/c we can't agree on the child. What are the chances of him getting joint custody or primary custody over our son? AND if we are constantly fighting over our baby already (he isn't even born yet) does anyone think that joint custody would be a good way to go? Am I being unrealistic about my expectations on custody rights? I'm really just looking for the best interest of my child, but I would hate for my baby to be away from for such long periods of time. He also stated that the JAGG office in the military said to him that if we both filed for primary custody that more than likely we would be awarded joint. His legal advisor also told him that a military man is more likely to be awarded primary or more visitation rights than a normal civialian. Does anyone know anything about army military and how judges might consider him a better parent than I could be?
Sorry so long..It's kind of complicated. Thanks for any help!

