A few weeks ago, my coworker, Lorna Rhoades, and I were guests on a podcast about Virginia military divorce. As a former military spouse, Lorna had a lot of really interesting insights into how it feels to be married to a military servicemember. One of the things that Lorna said, that I thought was interesting,...
Military Divorce
If you or your child’s other parent is in the military, you may be wondering if military service will have an affect upon your child custody or visitation case. Child custody or visitation cases can be more complicated when a military service member subject to deployment, or transfer to locations overseas or to another state,...
On Monday, we talked about the differences between military and civilian divorce. So far, we’ve mostly discussed the ways that military and civilian divorces are similar. (Shocking, right?) Well, as you already know, military and civilian divorce are a little bit different. Procedurally, they’re very similar, but there are certain assets that exist in military...
The military has loads of rules and regulations dealing with almost every aspect of its day to day management and operations. It should probably come as no surprise that it also has regulations relating to family support. When a couple separates, and either spouse is in the military, there are specific rules about when and...
The Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act was enacted in February of 1983 to help protect the rights of ex military spouses. Specifically, it provided authority for the state courts to treat disposable retired pay as marital property. Translation: the court can rule that whatever retirement money is earned during the marriage as a result...
In our area, there are a lot of military families. In the Hampton Roads area alone, we have NAS Oceana, Little Creek Amphibious Base, Fort Eustis, Langley AFB, Fort Monroe, Fort Story, Dam Neck Naval Base, Naval Station Norfolk, and on and on. There are military families living on and off base all over the...
The Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) is a survivor annuity policy offered by the military. It is designed to protect your right to receive your husband’s retirement in the event that he dies. These days, the average life expectancy of an American man is 75 years, and the average life expectancy of an American woman is...
For some reason, a lot of women think that, unless they’ve been married to their husband for ten years or more, they don’t have a right to share in the military retirement. That is absolutely not true. For every military marriage, for any duration, the wife earns a portion of the retirement. That portion may...