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By SARAH SMILEY
Pros and Cons of the Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act (USFSPA)
Last month, Dustin and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. The occasion is a significant milestone for military marriages because the Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act (USFSPA), enacted in 1982, allows local courts to consider military retirement pay dividable marital property after the husband and wife have been married 10 years, and if all of those years coincided with creditable service by the uniformed member.This is either a brilliant or nasty little legal act, depending on which side of the argument you stand. For their part, most dependent military spouses think USFSPA underscores their role as an invaluable asset to their significant other's career. After all, without us staying home to watch the kids, pay the bills and take care of the homefront, the service member wouldn't be so emotionally and physically free to give 100% to the military. In most cases, we travel from state to state with our loved one, and we give up our chance to work for a company for an uninterrupted amount of time and earn our own retirement pay. That sacrifice is our contribution to the service member's career. USFSPA recognizes this by allowing us entitlement to retirement benefits in the case of a divorce.
Clearly, many service members despise USFSPA because under it, they give up half of their retirement to someone who no longer wears their ring or shares their name. It must be hard, in hindsight, to remember how much the former spouse sacrificed and contributed in order for the service member to make it to retirement in the first place.
I joked with Dustin about USFSPA on our anniversary. Before we hit the 10 year mark, Dustin would sometimes tease that I shouldn't get sassy with him because I wasn't yet eligible for his retirement pay. Now the joke is on him: "Don't you get sassy with me, Dustin; I've already put in my 10 years."
All this jocular banter became significantly less funny when very real decisions appeared on our horizon. In Spring 2010, I will take advantage of Military One Source's new Career Advancement program to go back to school and get my masters degree. My goal is to secure a Teacher's Assistant position and eventually seek employment as a college professor. As a part time student, however, it will take me almost two years to complete. And if I am hired as a professor, well, I won't be moving any time soon. Dustin is up for a new set of orders, and thereby another move, in August 2011. He can't retire until 2016. What to do, on my end, with those five years in between?
Dustin thinks the answer is simple. I get my degree, follow him around for the next 5-6 years, and then settle down to pursue my dream as a college professor. But haven't I already put my dreams on hold for 10 years? Haven't I already sacrificed and waited long enough? I don't want to get my masters and then sit on it for 5 years. In 2 years, how can I walk away from all my hard work and follow Dustin to points yet unknown?
"Maybe you should just get out of the military and let me pursue my education now," I suggested.
But being in the military is what Dustin has always wanted to do. He can't imagine anything else. Being in the military is HIS dream. Sacrificing his dream, when he's so close to the ultimate payout (military retirement) is unthinkable.
Yet it's just as unthinkable for me to go another 5-6 years waiting for mine.
We have come to a crossroads. Our individual dreams and goals can't be pursued simultaneously unless we divide up our family and live in separate locations for the next few years, a fate that seems worse than both of our abandoned aspirations collectively. So who compromises? How do we meet in the middle? Who finally lets go of the tug-of-war rope and comes to the other side?
These are questions that military marriages face on a regular basis. It's part of what makes our lifestyle unimaginable to many. And yet plenty of marriages find a way to make it work, either by living separately temporarily or one person making a huge sacrifice for the other.
Dustin knows what he needs to do: finish his commitment and get his retirement. I haven't decided which path to take: follow him, or stay and get my degree. But as we wade through this rocky sea, I am grateful for provisions like USFSPA that recognize the full spectrum of commitment and sacrifice involved in military marriage.
Sarah Smiley is the author of “Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife” (Penguin/NAL) and “I’m Just Saying…” (Ballinger), and her syndicated column “Shore Duty” appears weekly in military and civilian newspapers across the country. She lives in Maine with her Navy husband and three young sons. Read more about Sarah at her website, www.SarahSmiley.com.
