Helpful(?) Hints: Passport Edition

Yowza! Has it really been so long since I last posted? February just flew by. We're down to the wire here both for language training and for getting all our crap together! Moving is never easy. Moving internationally is even less easy. Add in three full-time kids, two part-time kids, a cat, a three-legged dog, and the fact that this is our 1st move with State...well, let's just say this is the most complicated move we've ever attempted. Rather than bitch about all the crazy minute details that need to be attended to or that State is apparently the anti-checklist agency (the antithesis to DoD, if you will) where every move is treated like the first one ever conducted. Nope, I'll save all that for my internal seething. Instead I'll try to be a bit more helpful for any random FSOs/wanna be FSOs that come across this blog. Thus, I give you, the passport story...

Background:
Husband and I have a blended family. I have 1 child from my 1st marriage, and he has 2 children from his 1st marriage. My oldest daughter has a scumbag, shithole for a biological father who has no contact with her whatsoever. Now that we live so far away, my step-kids live with their mother in Texas during the school year.

Step Children:
Let's start with the step-kids. The State Dept, which deals with many cases of child custody and parental child abduction between international parents, is naturally very sensitive to the nature of taking children for whom you may not have full custody of overseas.  If you have step-children in the FS, you must have either joint, full, or sole custody to take them overseas. We have joint custody. You will need to submit all divorce/child custody paperwork to your HR Tech. You are also required to obtain and submit a notarized letter of consent from the other parent, which states that they give their permission for the child/children to be taken overseas for the period(s) of custody of the FSO or EFM parent. Your HR Tech can work with you on the specific language (our letter had to be redone at least 3 times and Husband's ex was not helpful or pleased to say the least!) All of this is needed in order to have your step-children recognized as EFMs. Then you can submit an OF-126 in order for them to be eligible to be put on your orders. This process took about 7 months for us between tracking down what was needed and getting all the parties involved to actually take the steps they needed to take. In our case, this length of time meant that we were not able to get their diplomatic passports because they have not been physically present with us since they were added as my EFMs. Oh, and I just noticed the other day when we were turning in our visa applications that despite all this, they still aren't listed on my TM4, haha! Back to HR!! Luckily for us, the Philippines actually has a loophole whereby we can apply for diplomatic visas for them and place them in their tourist passports. So once I get them added to my TM4 we should be able to get them into the country without issue.

One-Parent Signature Passport:
This was the real nail-biter. Since my oldest child, C, has no contact with her biological father, I applied for her passport with just my signature. This requires a a notarized statement of why you can't obtain the other parent's signature. Then, when you are in front of the passport official, you must fill out another statement basically going into as much detail as humanly possible as to why you can't obtain the other parent signature and then take an oath swearing that you are telling the truth. We went to the Special Issuance Agency (SIA) to apply for our passports since I thought it would be easier than going to Main State with all the kids, and the gentleman who took our applications was very kind and courteous. However, he warned me that DoS has begun taking a very hard look at 1-parent signature applications and has started asking the applicant parents to go to court in some cases in order to get a court order allowing the passport to be issued. He was not able to give me a general timeline for how long this process might take if they did not accept C's application as is, so up until the moment her passport was actually issued there was always a chance that they might come back and ask me to go to court. This, of course, would have hugely delayed us, so I have been putting off most of our other moving tasks until I was sure that C's passport would be issued. I was not about to leave the country without one of my children, so until I got that passport, I had no idea what we were going to do. So it was a MAJOR relief when I finally got word that her passport was ready to be picked up.

First Time Diplo Passport:
Hint - If you don't have your TM4, you will need yet another form called the DS-1640. I did not have this form when I went to apply for our diplo passports at the SIA. The SIA people were kind enough to take all of our applications and hold on to them while I tracked down the form, which should have taken about a day or two. Unfortunately, as with many of my experiences  with DoS, something that should take just a few days often turns into somewhat of a journey. To make a long story short, it took just over a month to get this form generated. This meant that our passport processing didn't even start until after the New Year. Hence why I was so concerned about the timeline concerning C's passport.