washingtonscene
through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obama’s budget; we can and must do better.” McCain said he and Thornberry agree on a defense budget of $640 billion “as a first step toward restoring military readiness, rebuilding our military, and reshaping our forces for the realities of 21st-century warfare.” As of press time, the president had a difficult path ahead of him to get the bud- get plan passed.
Division of A
USFSPA is a controversial law in the mil- itary community because it allows courts to treat military retired pay as property in the case of a divorce. Adam Unikowsky, the veteran’s attorney,
Retired Pay SCOTUS begins hearing.
case involving the Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act (USFSPA), a
controversial 1982 law, is being heard be- fore the Supreme Court. The case will de- termine the extent of a state court’s legal authority to divide military retired pay in a divorce when a former servicemember waives a portion of military retired pay in favor of VA disability compensation. Lt. Col. Aniela Szymanski, USMCR,
MOAA director of government relations for veterans benefits, attended the Supreme Court oral argument March 20 in the case of Howell v. Howell. In the current case, a family court
granted the former spouse 50 percent of the servicemember’s retirement pay. Years later, the retiree received a VA disability rating and waived a portion of his military retired pay to receive tax-free VA disability com- pensation instead. As a result, the servicemember’s mili-
tary retirement pay was reduced. His former spouse took the retiree to court to get her portion of that — in this case, $152 per month — back.
28 MILITARY OFFICER MAY 2017
says the letter and spirit of USFSPA were followed in this case. Disability pay, he argued, is paid to a veteran for injuries suf- fered in service and to compensate for lost earning potential. Previously, a lower-level court in Ari- zona held that even though the reduction in retired pay was the result of a VA dis- ability, the retiree still had to pay the $152 per month to the former spouse. The court reasoned the former spouse had a “vested interest” in the retired pay and had come to rely on the full amount. During the March 20 proceedings, Jus-
tice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “Alimony is something that one spouse pays to the other based on economic need. The divi- sion of property gives a spouse the prop- erty outright. It’s hers. It’s not something that she is getting from somebody else. It is hers, because there’s an enormous difference between equitable division of property and alimony.” The justices asked questions aimed at the implications of how varying legal inter- pretations of USFSPA will affect those who have come to rely on the income provided by a portion of their former spouse’s mili- tary retirement. “How consequential is the issue before us?” Ginsburg asked. “Because if you’re right, then in all future divorce settle- ments, they won’t say half of the mili- tary retirement pay. They’ll give a dollar amount which is equal to what the mili- tary retirement pay is before any disability payment kicks in.” Chief Justice John Roberts was more di-
rect in his skepticism. “You have a law that says you can’t divide disability pay, and yet, you say it’s okay to say, ‘Well, I’m not going
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