When one of you serves.

Yes. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act covers any civil action or proceeding, including a child custody proceeding, in which the serving person is on either side of the case, is in military service or within 90 days of leaving it, and has been given notice. The court may pause the case on its own. It must pause the case for at least 90 days if the servicemember asks and sends in two things: a letter from the servicemember setting out how current duty makes it materially harder to appear and giving a date when they will be available, and a separate letter from the commanding officer saying that duty prevents the servicemember appearing and that leave is not authorized at that time. Asking for a pause is not the same as entering the case, and it gives up no defense, including the argument that the court has no power over the person. A servicemember can ask for a further pause after the first one. If the court refuses the further pause, the court must appoint a lawyer to represent the servicemember. A pause is a delay, not a cancellation.

Before a court can enter judgment against someone who has not appeared, the person who filed must give the court a sworn statement saying whether the absent person is in military service and showing the facts behind that, or saying that they could not find out. Knowingly filing a false statement is a crime punishable by a fine or up to a year in prison. If it looks as though the absent person is serving, the court may not enter judgment until it has appointed a lawyer for them. Where military status cannot be worked out, the court may require the filing party to post a bond to cover any loss if the judgment is later set aside. In a case covered by this section where the defendant is serving, the court must grant a pause of at least 90 days on the application of counsel or on its own motion, where there may be a defense that cannot be presented without the defendant, or where counsel has not been able to reach the defendant after due diligence. If a default judgment was entered while the person was serving, or within 60 days after they left service, the court must reopen it on their application where military service materially affected their ability to defend and they have a meritorious or legal defense. That application must be filed no later than 90 days after service ends. A buyer in good faith who acquired something under the default judgment keeps it.

No, and this is one of the sharpest traps in military divorce. A court can have every power it needs to end the marriage and still have no power to divide military retired pay. Federal law lets a court treat disposable retired pay as marital or community property only if the court has jurisdiction over the serving member on one of three grounds: the member lives in the court's area for a reason other than a military assignment, the member is domiciled in the court's area, or the member consents to the court's jurisdiction. Being stationed in a state does not by itself satisfy the first ground. Consent is a real and separate route, which means a member who takes part in the case in a way that amounts to consent can hand the court a power it would not otherwise have. The same three grounds govern whether the pay center will honor a later out-of-state order that changes an earlier one.

Only disposable retired pay can be divided, and disposable retired pay is smaller than gross retired pay. It is the total monthly retired pay the member is entitled to, less four kinds of amount: money owed back to the United States for earlier overpayments of retired pay and for recoupments required by law, amounts taken out because a court-martial ordered forfeiture or because the law required a waiver of retired pay in order to receive compensation under title 5 or title 38 (this is where VA disability comes in), for a member retired for disability under chapter 61 the part of the pay attributable to the disability percentage at retirement, and the premium deducted to provide a survivor annuity to a spouse or former spouse who is receiving a share of the retired pay under a court order. There is also a frozen benefit rule for divorces that become final before the member retires: in those cases the total monthly retired pay used in the calculation is the retired pay the member would have been entitled to using the retired pay base and years of service on the date of the decree, increased by cost of living adjustments. In plain terms, for a couple who divorce before retirement, the share is fixed to the member's rank and service at the date of the decree, not at the date of retirement.

The 10/10 rule decides one thing only: whether the military pay center will send a former spouse their share of a property division directly, rather than the former spouse having to collect it from the retiree. If the marriage did not overlap at least 10 years of the member's retirement-creditable service, the pay center may not make direct payments of the property division share. It does not decide whether a court may divide the pension at all. A court with the jurisdiction described in the law may divide military retired pay as property in a marriage shorter than that; what changes is only who has to hand the money over each month. The rule also does not apply to child support or alimony: those can be paid directly regardless of the length of the marriage.

Across all court orders that divide retired pay as property, the pay center may not pay out more than 50 percent of disposable retired pay. Where more than one order is served, covering a spouse and one or more former spouses or several former spouses, the orders are satisfied first come, first served out of whatever is left under the 50 percent cap after earlier orders are met. There is a second and higher ceiling that applies when a property division order and a support garnishment under the Social Security Act are both running against the same person: the combined total may not exceed 65 percent of the retired pay treated as remuneration for employment. If an order asks for more than the cap allows, that alone does not make the order irregular on its face, but the pay center treats the order as fully satisfied by paying the maximum permitted. Hitting the cap does not wipe out what the member still owes. Any unsatisfied obligation may be enforced by other means available under law.

VA disability compensation is not divisible, and the way a retiree receives it can shrink what is divisible. A retiree who wants VA disability compensation must in many cases waive an equal amount of retired pay. Federal law then takes that waived amount out of disposable retired pay: the definition subtracts amounts deducted as a result of a waiver of retired pay required by law in order to receive compensation under title 5 or title 38. A percentage share of a smaller pot is a smaller check, and the change can come years after the divorce. In 2017 the Supreme Court held unanimously that a state court may not get around this by ordering the veteran to make the former spouse whole. The Court did leave family courts free to take account of the possibility of a waiver when calculating an award in the first place, and free to take account of a drop in value when calculating or recalculating the need for spousal support.

A court order or a written agreement can require a member to elect Survivor Benefit Plan coverage for a former spouse. But an order alone does not create coverage. Someone has to file the election with the military department, and if the member does not, the former spouse can ask for the election to be treated as made. That request is called a deemed election, and it has a hard deadline: the Secretary concerned must receive the former spouse's written request within one year of the date of the court order or filing involved. Miss it, and the law says an election may not be deemed to have been made. The former spouse must send the written request plus either a copy of the court order, regular on its face, that requires the election or approves the agreement, or a statement from the clerk of the court that the agreement has been filed. Separately, a member who is already in the plan and elects former spouse coverage has their own one year deadline, running from the date of the decree. This is the deadline that quietly destroys awards, because the decree looks like it did the job.

An unremarried former spouse keeps dependent status for military health care if, on the date of the final decree of divorce, dissolution or annulment, the marriage had lasted at least 20 years, the member performed at least 20 years of retirement-creditable service, and those 20 years of marriage overlapped those 20 years of service. The former spouse must also not have medical cover under an employer-sponsored health plan. Where those conditions are met, the regulation says eligibility continues indefinitely. It is not time limited. It can be lost, though: remarriage ends it permanently even if the new marriage itself ends, and taking employer-sponsored health cover ends it for as long as that cover is in place. The regulation adds further conditions, including that the person must not be eligible for Medicare Part A except in the situations the regulation names, and must not be the dependent of a NATO member.

The 20/20/15 rule covers a marriage of at least 20 years to a member with at least 20 years of retirement-creditable service where only 15 or more, but fewer than 20, of the married years overlapped that service. For divorces final before 1 April 1985 the statute treats that former spouse as a dependent on the same open-ended basis as the 20/20/20 group. For divorces final on or after 1 April 1985 the statute says the person stops being a dependent at the end of the one year period beginning on the date of the final decree. The regulation is more precise still about the middle period: where the decree is on or after 1 April 1985 but before 29 September 1988, eligibility ran from the decree until 31 December 1988 or for two years from the decree, whichever is later. For every decree on or after 29 September 1988, which is nearly every divorce a reader will be facing today, the cover lasts 365 days, or 366 in a leap year, from the date of the divorce or annulment. After that it is gone, and the person needs to arrange their own cover.

Shopping privileges follow the 20/20/20 test, not the 20/20/15 one. The law directs the Secretary of Defense to write regulations giving an unremarried former spouse who meets the 20/20/20 marriage and service test the right to use commissary stores and morale, welfare and recreation retail facilities to the same extent and on the same basis as the surviving spouse of a retired member. Notice that the cross-reference is to clause (i) of the 20/20/20 definition only, which is the marriage and service part, and not to clause (ii), which is the employer health plan condition. So the employer health plan condition governs health care, not shopping. On the ID card: TRICARE's own guidance says that where the service personnel component finds the 20/20/20 criteria are met, a new ID card is issued in the former spouse's own name, with their own Social Security number listed as the sponsor number the first time the card is renewed after the divorce takes effect. A former spouse who does not qualify under these rules loses their ID card and the privileges that go with it when the divorce becomes final. Separately, a dependant or former dependant receiving transitional compensation after dependant abuse may use commissary and exchange stores while those payments run.

Yes. It is called transitional compensation, and it is paid monthly to dependants or former dependants of a member who was on active duty for more than 30 days and who was separated because of dependant abuse. The law reaches three routes out of the service: conviction of a dependant-abuse offense where the conviction results in separation by court-martial sentence or forfeiture of all pay and allowances; administrative separation, voluntary or involuntary, where the basis for the separation includes a dependant-abuse offense; and conviction of a dependant-abuse offense in a federal district court or a state court where the member is then separated for some other offense. A dependant-abuse offense is conduct while on active duty for more than 30 days that involves abuse of the member's spouse or a dependent child and is a criminal offense named in Department of Defense regulations. Payment normally goes to the spouse or former spouse the member was married to when the offense was committed, with an additional amount for each dependent child living in that household; children living elsewhere are paid directly, and if there is no eligible spouse the children are paid. The program runs for not less than 12 months and not more than 36 months. Two things stop it: a former spouse who remarries loses it permanently, and payments stop if the former member moves back into the household. Where the victim was a child, the Secretary may not pay a spouse or former spouse found to have been an active participant in the abuse. Recipients may also use commissary and exchange stores while payments run.

Every service runs legal assistance offices, and they are free. Federal law lets the service Secretaries provide legal assistance on personal civil legal affairs to serving members, to members and former members entitled to retired or retainer pay, to their dependants, and to some others. Divorce, legal separation, annulment, custody and paternity advice are all inside what these offices normally handle. But there are hard limits, and the most important one in a divorce is the conflict rule: the same office will not advise both sides on the same issue. Whichever spouse establishes the attorney-client relationship first gets the help, and the Navy's published guidance says plainly that this applies even where the person who loses out is the servicemember. The office will try to refer the other spouse to another free source, or to a bar association referral service, but it may not point at a named private lawyer. Legal assistance attorneys also do not represent servicemembers or their dependants in family court. Divorce is a matter of state law, so a family will normally still need their own civilian lawyer for the court case itself.