Parents Join Together for Support After Losing Custody : Families: A support group for divorced parents who do not have custody of their children is quickly gaining popularity.

Marcia Smith-Field spent one year and thousands of dollars entrenched in a divorce that left her devastated--and without custody of her two daughters.

It was the end of a troubled nine-year marriage during which Field battled depression. Her struggle continued throughout a separation and a bitter divorce that resulted in a custody trial. Halfway through that fight, Field, fatigued and outmaneuvered, surrendered; she conceded custody of her girls, ages 6 and 9, to her ex-husband.

“I fought because I felt it would be important some day for my children to know that I did,” Field said. “But after a year I was emotionally exhausted and financially drained.”

She did not know it at the time, but her depression was driving her to seek what she felt lacking, what her ex-husband seemed to have--a network of support.

“He had an extended family, a lot more support than I did,” she said. And, she thought, “Custody is not a forever thing. The children’s needs would change, I would get stronger. I was sure we’d be together again one day.”

The custody trial ended in December, 1988. Soon after, Field’s father died of leukemia. The double blow left her grieving as both a daughter and a mother.

“It was devastating to lose my father,” Field said. But she felt a tragic comparison. “The pain of losing my children was even greater.”

It was compounded by guilt over having conceded custody. “I was suffering tremendously. When the children came to visit, all I did was cry.” She reacted to those feelings by isolating herself.

Then, last August, she got an idea.

“I suffered in silence for eight months. Then I realized there had to be others,” Field said.

By September she was putting up posters in the family relations offices of courthouses and in YWCAs and YMCAs in the area. They read: “Parents Without Custody--A support group for mothers and fathers who have lost custody of their children. Speak out! You need no longer suffer in silence.”

The reaction surprised her. In no time at all, there was a group meeting in her Stamford home. Soon an offshoot of that group got started in nearby Danbury.

When Field took her daughters skiing in Vermont, she met a man, also a non-custodial parent, who was on an outing with his daughter. Now a Parents Without Custody group is meeting in the man’s home.

Then the Danbury News-Times printed a story about Field and sent it over the news wire, where it was picked up by a newspaper in Missouri. In a town called Carl Junction the story caught the eye of a divorced woman who called Field asking for guidelines to start a group there.

Next a woman in Portland, Me., heard about it and a group is starting there too.

In only a few months, Parents Without Custody has spread, mostly by word of mouth, from bulletin boards in the Stamford area to three other states, with more inquiries coming in. It looks like it will spread across the United States--and be the only national support group of its kind.

Edward Kweskin, a Stamford attorney and a specialist in family law, is not surprised. He is working pro bono with Field to establish Parents Without Custody as a nonprofit organization.

“Unfortunately, this group sells itself,” Kweskin said. “People who go through divorce comment on feeling angry, hurt, disenfranchised, confused. And for non-custodial parents, not only has a sacred union been destroyed, they’ve also lost the parental prerogatives of guidance and control, and the constancy and immediacy of their children’s love. It leaves a tremendous void.”

Not only an emotional void, but often a practical one as well. Field, for example, lost her job over spending so much time in court, and then her home when she conceded custody. And she found that there is a ready-made perception that goes with the non-custodial parent.

“When people hear you don’t have the children, they see you as the guilty parent, the bad one,” Field said.

Talk during the group meetings centers around common problems with ex-spouses and getting information from schools and doctors. One parent talks about how, when she tries to call her children at their father’s home in a town several miles away, all she gets is an answering machine. And when her younger child was sick recently and her ex-husband didn’t take him to the doctor, she felt helpless. “I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know who his doctor is up there.”

Often, non-custodial parents are not getting information from their ex-spouses. “These are the same people who got divorced; they still have anger,” Kweskin said. “They may not overtly interfere, but many act in a passive-aggressive manner.” For the non-custodial parent, the result is missed report-card conferences, school plays, baseball games and ballet recitals.