Houston Military Divorce Attorney

Divorcing an Active Military Service Member

Video Transcript:

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

The best thing is to just really get educated on what your rights are and what kind of benefits that you would be entitled to.

Tom Mustin: 

Can a spouse get a divorce from an active service person? We're talking to attorney Duana Boswell-Loechel about that and more on today's episode of Ask The Lawyer. Duana, thanks for joining us again.

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

Thanks for having me.

Tom Mustin: 

Always great to talk to you. Now, can a spouse get a divorce from an active service person? And what if that active service person, male or female is deployed?

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

So, yes, you can get a divorce while somebody's active in the military. There are some more steps that you have to take to make sure that that serviceman's rights are protected in that divorce. If they're deployed they can ask for a stay of the proceedings until they are back stateside. There's been many divorces that I've been able to push through the system when somebody was deployed, especially now that we have a lot of Zoom capabilities in the courtrooms.

Tom Mustin: 

So what are the main military benefits that a spouse is entitled to?

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

There are several benefits depending on the length of the marriage, what they're able to continue to have. There's retirement benefits, there are being able to stay on the healthcare plans. There are any kind of being able to keep using the stores that are on the military base. And those are all dependent on the length of the marriage and how long the service member has served as well.

Tom Mustin: 

So that's the eligibility and the requirement, is how long they've been married? What do you have to do to be eligible?

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

The service?

Tom Mustin: 

Yeah.

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

Yeah, so it's the service member's active duty length combined with the service members. So we have different benefits at different levels. There's what we call a 10/10/10, so that's 10 years of service, 10 years of marriage and 10 years of overlap. And there's also a 10/10/20, which is 20 years of service, with 10 years of marriage, and 10 years overlap. So there's different points and different lengths of service and different lengths of marriage that will trigger different benefits.

Tom Mustin: 

Okay. And what if children are involved? How does child custody and child support differ for military families?

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

The biggest difference probably in custody is gonna be visitation when they're deployed. So if they're not stateside then they can actually designate a family member or somebody else to exercise their visitation when they're unable to because they're deployed out of the country. As far as child support, that's calculated the same way, depending on what kind of pay they receive, is dependent on how much child support that they would get and the type of pay that they're receiving.

Tom Mustin: 

So, Duana, what kind of advice would you give to a military family who's considering divorce?

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

The best thing is to just really get educated on what your rights are, and what kind of benefits that you would be entitled to. There are JAG offices for every military branch that will give you advice and give you some information on what you would be facing. Also, getting your independent counsel, if you're the non-serving spouse is very important. And sometimes JAG just doesn't wanna get involved in the kind of custody battle.

Tom Mustin: 

Well, a lot of great information as always. Thank you so much, Duana, for joining us again.

Duana Boswell-Loechel: 

Thank you.

Tom Mustin: 

We appreciate it. And that's gonna do it for this episode of Ask The Lawyer. My guest has been Duana Boswell-Loechel. If you wanna ask her about your situation, call the number you see on your screen. Thanks for watching. I'm Tom Mustin for Ask The Lawyers.

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