You’re married to A-U-S. Military service member, but you’re about to get a divorce. What benefits are you still entitled to receive from the US government as a former military spouse? Even after that divorce finalizes, we’re gonna go over healthcare, your military spouse’s retirement and disability pay and installation access to things like the commissary. In exchange, we’re also going to talk about how legal separation plays into all of this, including your ability to receive, bah, the house housing allowance and to be able to take advantage of other support services that are available to military dependents.
And I’ll let you know what could cause you to stop receiving these post divorce benefits. This is gonna be a big one.
What’s up, everybody? I’m Ashley Noel. On this channel, we talk about military lifestyles, leadership tips, and tips for living and working abroad. So if any of those topics interest you, please make sure to hit those like and subscribe buttons down below. It is completely free to you, and it does actually help the channel and lets me know that the information that I’m providing is actually useful.
All right, first up, let’s introduce the Uniform Services Former Spouses Protection Act. Congress passed this law in 1982, and it provides certain protections to former military spouses regarding military retirement pay. This law allows states to be able to divide and distribute military retirement pay to former spouses upon divorce as a form of marital property. Because of that, states are able to divide disposable retired pay, such as your military spouse’s pension or thrift savings plan, and you, as the former spouse, may be entitled to receive a portion of that based on the court’s order. Disability pay and any sort of VA benefits are completely different.
Disability pay belongs to the service member, and former spouses are not entitled to it outside of retirement pay, which, again, the civilian divorce court will determine what you receive, if anything. Whether or not you’re entitled to any other benefits is going to depend on how long you and your military spouse were married and how long that marriage overlapped with their military service. First, let’s talk about the 2020 rule. So, for instance, if you were married to a military service member for at least 20 years, and your spouse served in the military for at least 20 years, and your marriage and that period of military service overlapped for at least 20 years, then upon divorce, you’re able to keep your Tricare medical coverage, and you’ll be able to access the commissary exchange and movie theaters on military installations. But if you remarry somebody who is not in the military, then your Tricare benefits will end permanently.
But your base access privileges, your commissary privileges, your exchange privileges, those will all be suspended. And if that subsequent marriage ends up ending for any reason, so either a dissolution of marriage so you get divorced, or death of that later spouse, then those benefits, those base access benefits will be reinstated. There’s also the 2020 15 rule. If you don’t meet the 2020 rule, if you are married to a military service member for at least 20 years and your spouse served in the military for at least 20 years, but that marriage and the period of military service overlap for at least 15 years, but less than 20 years, then upon divorce, you’ll only be able to keep your tricare medical coverage for one year post divorce. But you won’t be entitled to any of those base access benefits like the commissary or the base exchange or the movie theater.
What about the kids that you have together with your former military spouse? Kids are a separate issue. Even after the divorce is finalized and you lose status as a military dependent, a military member’s children do not lose that status, and so they’ll still be able to keep their Tricare coverage and base access benefits until they turn 22 or marry. What if your military spouse hadn’t served for 20 years before you got divorced, or your marriage didn’t overlap for 15 years with their military service? You won’t be entitled to any base access benefits.
Tricare, however, does offer a transitional health care plan called the continued healthcare Benefit program for up to 36 months, and this is supposed to be sort of like a bridge to help former military spouses transition from military medical coverage onto civilian medical coverage. What if you’re legally separated for the purpose of determining your entitlement to Tricare coverage or base access benefits? Legally separated is still married. The status of your benefits does not change until the divorce is finalized. What about Bah and your ability to get that housing allowance while you’re still separated?
Each branch of the military may have different rules about what that amount needs to be, so I recommend reaching out to your installation’s legal office to figure out what that amount is, because they should know. But for instance, army and air force have the same rules, so the service member would have to pay their separated spouse a portion of the non locality with dependent Bah rate. So how you figure this out for army and Air force is you look at that non locality with dependent Bah rate, and you divide that by the number of dependents the military member has, and then each dependent is going to get their equal share per month. So if it’s just the military member and their separated spouse, then the separated spouse would end up getting the entire non locality with dependent Bah rate each month. For Air force you can find this calculation in AFI 36, 29, six and army you can find it in AR 600 and 899.
Now once you get divorced, that entitlement goes away and it’s the civilian court that determines the amount, if any, that the military member has to pay each month in spousal and child support. So from that point, once you’re divorced, you’re only going to be entitled to what the civilian court orders. I’ve made a video that goes into a lot more detail about a former spouse’s entitlements to a military member’s retirement pay and VA benefits, so make sure to click here to be able to check out that video next. I do hope this helps. If there are any other military related topics that you would like for me to talk about, then please leave me a comment in the comment section down below and I will do what I can.
I thank you for being here. I appreciate your time and I’ll see you. Bye.