Military Divorce · Virginia

By Corrie Sirkin, Esq. · Founding Partner

For a career servicemember, the retirement is often worth more than the house, the cars, and the savings combined. So when a marriage ends, the first quiet fear is usually the same: how much of my retirement is on the table, and will the order hold up. The good news is that the rules here are knowable. The hard part is getting the math and the wording exactly right.

Virginia treats retired pay as marital property

Virginia divides property by a rule called equitable distribution, which means fair rather than automatically equal. Military retired pay sits inside that rule. A federal law called the Uniformed Services Former Spouses Protection Act, or USFSPA, lets a state court treat the portion of retired pay earned during the marriage as marital property the court can divide.

Only the part earned during the marriage is in play. Service before the wedding, and service after the date the court uses to value the marriage, generally stays with the servicemember. That is why dates matter so much in these cases. A few months of overlap, counted correctly, can move real money.

How the marital share is figured

Courts use a fraction often called the marital share. The top number is the months the couple was married while the servicemember was earning credit toward retirement. The bottom number is the total months of creditable service at the time of divorce. That fraction is the marital slice of the pension, and the former spouse can receive up to half of that slice, not half of the whole pension.

Here is the part people miss. Half of the marital share is a ceiling, not a floor. A court weighs the whole financial picture and can award less. The number is not automatic, which is exactly why the argument you make, and the evidence behind it, changes the result.

Why the order language decides whether you actually get paid

Winning a share on paper is only half the job. The retirement order has to satisfy the military pay center, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, down to the wording, or it gets rejected and sent back. Months of refiling can follow. We draft the order so it reads the way the pay center needs the first time. For the broader set of federal rules that ride along with a service family's case, our military divorce page lays them out, and our divorce practice page walks through how a Virginia case moves from filing to final order.

"Half of the marital share is the ceiling, not the starting line. The number you walk away with depends on the case you build."

Corrie Sirkin, Esq. Founding Partner

Honest counsel: precision now saves a fight later

I have watched spouses lose money they were owed because an order was vague, and watched servicemembers pay more than the law required for the same reason. The retirement is usually the biggest number in the whole divorce, so it deserves the most careful drafting. Get the dates right, get the fraction right, and get the language the pay center accepts. That care is not glamorous, but it is the difference between an order that pays and one that bounces.

Common questions