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Dividing military retired pay in divorce

March 4, 2013 • J.J. Montanaro

Q: After 17 years I divorced my hus­band. He was in the Air National Guard and worked for them in a civil­ian capac­ity. I was awarded half of his mil­i­tary retire­ment. His attor­ney did the QDRO incor­rectly. I found out recently that he retired last year. I have tried to find out how to con­tact the plan admin­is­tra­tor, only to come to a dead end. Can you please send me infor­ma­tion on how to fix the QDRO and get in touch with the plan admin­is­tra­tor? I am also a vet­eran, but did not stay in till retire­ment because we had children.

–Cyn­thia, Brick, New Jersey

A: The Defense Finance and Account­ing Ser­vice (DFAS) is respon­si­ble for mil­i­tary retire­ment. You can con­tact them at 1–888-332‑7411. They should be able to let you know if your divorce decree is drafted within the guide­lines pro­vided by The Uni­formed Ser­vices For­mer Spouses’ Pro­tec­tion Act. Since A Qual­i­fied Domes­tic Rela­tions Order is not used to divide mil­i­tary retire­ment pay you may need to enlist the help of an attor­ney to get things right. Here is a doc­u­ment enti­tled Guid­ance on Divid­ing Mil­i­tary Retired Pay from the DFAS web­site. It might be help­ful to your attor­ney. Good luck.

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One response to “Dividing military retired pay in divorce”

  1. rjones
    March 7, 2013 at 6:47 am |

    If he has been retired for a year, and you did just fine with­out it, you don’t need it.

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