Dividing a Military Pension in a North Carolina Divorce

July 26, 2012 (Press-News.org) Deciding how to divide marital assets is a challenging step that must be completed before a divorce is final. This step can be especially challenging if one or both spouses is a current or retired military service member. If this is the case, it means that the couple's biggest asset is oftentimes the military spouse's retirement pension.

Because of this pension, the laws regarding its division, and other factors affecting military couples, a military divorce can be more complicated than a divorce between two nonmilitary members in North Carolina.

Division Of The Military Pension

A military pension can be worth a substantial amount of money and is guaranteed for the rest of the military spouse's life. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal discussed the complexities involved in dividing a military pension and how it is crucial to seek the counsel of a qualified military divorce attorney who knows and understands the laws and requirements regarding these benefits when seeking a military divorce.

The state in which a spouse files the divorce petition can be one challenging aspect of the division of a military retirement pension. This can be a challenge because, while a service member may be stationed at Pope Air Force Base, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, MCAS Cherry Point or MCAS New River, they may have a permanent residence in another state. An estranged nonmilitary spouse or ex-spouse could reside in a third state. Depending on the state, the nonmilitary spouse could lose out on the retirement benefits if certain forms are not filled out correctly.

The length of the marriage is another factor that can contribute to the difficulty of dividing up the military retirement pension. When the marriage overlaps the military spouse's service period by 10 or more years, the nonmilitary spouse receives benefit payments directly from the government. If the marriage lasted fewer than 10 years of the service period, then the government will not enforce a court order from the nonmilitary spouse for a share of the retirement pension. In that case, if the military spouse does not provide a share of the retirement benefits directly to the nonmilitary spouse, then the matter needs to be settled in a divorce court in the appropriate state.

Military retirement pensions are also governed by a somewhat complex interplay of both state and federal rules. Therefore, even when a nonmilitary spouse gets court-awarded retirement benefits after filing for divorce in the appropriate state, state and federal rules can still make collecting those benefits a challenge.

Military Divorce Is On The Rise

The rate of divorce in the military has risen from 2.6 percent in 2001 to 3.7 percent in 2011. For Air Force enlisted personnel in 2011, nearly 5 percent of marriages ended in divorce. The overall rate of divorce in the Air Force - at 3.9 percent - is the highest in twenty years. The rates of divorce in the Navy (3.6 percent) and Army (3.7 percent) are at their highest rates since 2004. The Marine Corps divorce rate did not change between 2010 and 2011, but is still high at 3.8 percent.

An experienced military divorce attorney can help navigate the complexities unique to military couples, such as military pension division or complicated child custody arrangements, for either the military or nonmilitary spouse.

Article provided by Roberts Law Group, PLLC
Visit us at www.robertsfamilylawteam.com