THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 7, 1995 TAG: 9502070008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By DORIS MOZLEY
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
A movement afoot on Capitol Hill would gut the already weak Former Spouses Protection Act enacted in 1982 to protect long-serving military wives in case of divorce.
The assault on the rights of military wives is led by Rep. Robert Dornan with the enthusiastic aid and encouragement of a small group of disgruntled, angry, selfish divorced military members who have united under the banner of the American Retirees Association. ARA members know that they cannot repeal the Former Spouses Protection Act, but if they can get the following amendments passed, it will be a giant step toward nullifying the act completely. The ARA's proposed amendments:
1. To revoke pension shares awarded as property to an ex-spouse if the ex-spouse enters into another honorable legal marriage.
The following example shows how unfair this is. A military member and his spouse share a 20-year military marriage. They divorce. Both remarry. The military member is rewarded because he can add his new wife (who never served a day as a military wife) to the military health-care rolls (at a cost to the taxpayer of about $5,000).
In addition, when his ex-wife remarries, he gets another windfall benefit, his ex-wife's share of their jointly earned pension. Someone has said, ``Hey, that's not fair.'' I reply, ``Yes, that is just the point of the Dornan/ARA bill.''
The impartial American Bar Association testified against such a law in 1990 by observing its end result would be to increase the number of military spouses who would not be able to share in the benefits their many years of work helped to produce.
2. Another of Dornan's amendments would bar states from awarding a portion of military retirement benefits to the spouse upon a member's eligibility to retire. Mr. Dornan has not explained what a spouse is supposed to live on if the military partnership is dissolved at year 20 and the member elects to remain in service until year 30. If the spouse dies during that 10-year period, the member escapes sharing the jointly earned military pension altogether.
3. Another Dornan amendment to the ex-spouse law would change the definition of ``disposable'' retired pay to mandate that a spouse's share would be computed as if the member had retired at the time of divorce.
While the spouse's dollar amount would be frozen, receipt would be delayed without compensation in any form. The result would be a greatly accelerated reduction in the percentage of benefits payable in relation to the years of marriage during service.
With the divorce at the 20-year mark and retirement at 30 years, the Dornan amendment would reduce the military wife's share of the jointly earned pension from 33.33 percent to less than 20 percent. MEMO: Ms. Mozley, who lives in Norfolk, is chair of the Committee for Justice
and Equality for the Military Wife.
by CNB