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Husband doesn’t control eligibility for ID card/benefits

February 20, 2013 • J.J. Montanaro

Q: My hus­band retired from the Air Force after 23 years of ser­vice. We mar­ried after he had retired, and have been mar­ried for another 23 years.  He tells me I am not enti­tled to my mil­i­tary ID card after the divorce if he doesn’t agree to it? I did read some­thing about a 20–20-20 rule. Could you please give me some advice on this, please? I have health issues and he is see­ing another woman.

–Deb­o­rah, Las Vegas, Nevada

A: Your hus­band has an inflated sense of his influ­ence as it applies to your eli­gi­bil­ity for mil­i­tary ben­e­fits and an ID card. The 20–20-20 rule is actu­ally the law as it per­tains to an ex-spouse’s eli­gi­bil­ity for health­care and other ben­e­fits includ­ing access to instal­la­tion facil­i­ties. What that means is that in order to be enti­tled to mil­i­tary ben­e­fits the fol­low­ing require­ments need to be met:

 

  • The mar­riage must have lasted at least 20 years.
  • The ser­vice­mem­ber must have had at least 20 years of ser­vice cred­itable towards retirement.
  • The mar­riage and cred­itable ser­vice must over­lap for at least 20 years

So there you have it, the 20–20-20 rule. Unfor­tu­nately, you don’t meet those require­ments since your 23 year mar­riage began after he was already retired. In sit­u­a­tions like yours, you will be eli­gi­ble for a pre­mium based pro­gram called the Con­tin­ued Health Care Ben­e­fit Pro­gram. It’s sim­i­lar to COBRA in the civil­ian sec­tor. For an indi­vid­ual, the cost is $1,138 per quar­ter (about $380/month), so if the divorce becomes a real­ity, that’s some­thing you’ll want to con­sider. Con­tact the folks at TRICARE if you have ques­tions regard­ing this pro­gram, 800–444-5445. Good luck!

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6 responses to “Husband doesn’t control eligibility for ID card/benefits”

  1. jleforte
    March 13, 2013 at 11:17 am |

    I recently found out that my spouse had been hav­ing a 5 year affair with another offi­cer. She also had affairs with numer­ous oth­ers dur­ing this time. I have threat­ened to call the IG to report this. I have been told that she could lose her retire­ment ben­e­fits and that I would not be enti­tled to half her retire­ment pay if she should lose it as she could be dis­charge as other than hon­or­able. Is this true?

    1. guest
      March 13, 2013 at 4:35 pm |

      If she’s dis­charged prior to 20 years there is no retire­ment to split. Sec­ondly, unless you have pic­tures of her in the act, there really isn’t much they can do…trust me my hus­band has tried on sev­eral occa­sions and in the end it’s been over­turned. By default you are not auto­mat­i­cally enti­tled to 50%, that would have to be split in a civil­ian court by a judge.

  2. PILI
    April 9, 2013 at 7:27 am |

    I ve got 1992 in SPAIN zaragoza with a mil­i­tary air­force mem­ber. we have a son in 1994 and 1996 me and my son returnd to spain while he went to the states sta­tion in ari­zona he i ask him for the divorce and he said he would take my son to the states if i keep on with this idea, 1999 he retired and desaperd i could not a hold on him with­out legal court order . now im try­ing again after hav­ing infor­ma­tion that he is in delaware, I NEED to know what am i enti­tled of dos he he have to pay child suport of al this years? because he never did, can i ask for alemone?

    1. guest
      April 9, 2013 at 9:21 am |

      If you never filed for child sup­port then no, you aren’t enti­tled to any­thing at this stage of the game since the child is over 18. If you have a US court order then yes he would have to pay back child sup­port, you will have to get this enforced through a US court sys­tem though and most judges will want to know why you waited so long to come for­ward. This is some­thing you should have filed in 1996 before you left though.

      You essen­tially kept him sep­a­rated from his child by flee­ing to a coun­try where he couldn’t follow…you are hon­estly VERY lucky he didn’t file kid­nap­ping charges against you back in the day, because he was well within his legal rights to do so (we did it to my hus­bands ex when she moved my hus­bands son to HI with­out con­sent the two of them had to move back to the state where the divorce decree was final­ized), and doing so would have forced you to bring the child back to the state in which he was last resid­ing in.

      After all of these years I’d be very sur­prised if he hasn’t filed a by proxy divorce based on aban­don­ment, which means you are enti­tled to noth­ing and are prob­a­bly already divorced. Hon­estly, if you are try­ing to find him the Inter­net is prob­a­bly the best way to go, try Face­Book and Google, almost every­one has left some sort of dig­i­tal foot­print. If he says you guys are divorced then ask for a copy of the decree or the state/county in which it was filed so you can request a copy for your records

      After all of these years

  3. Jewel A. Prine
    April 18, 2013 at 11:50 am |

    In ref­er­ence to 20/20/20 Mine is 48years 9 months/20/20 So why did they take all my ben­e­fits away from me????

  4. Guest
    April 19, 2013 at 1:46 pm |

    I was mar­ried to a ser­vice mem­ber for 10 years and 2 months. Our divorce was final on Novem­ber 15, 2002 only to marry each other again on Decem­ber 26, 2003 until we legally sep­a­rated on 4/24/03. We are pend­ing a divorce. Will the mil­i­tary com­bine the two mar­riages as one? Will I be able to keep my mil­i­tary ID card?

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