There are a few issues that need to be considered in divorce when one or both of the parties are in the military. First, you need to know the 10-10-10 rule for retirement in Georgia. According to Statesidelegal, this means that 10 years of active duty service have overlapped 10 years of marriage. If this rule is not satisfied, it does not mean that spouses are entitled to a pro-rata share of the retirement. But it does mean that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service will not pay the retirement directly to the other spouse.
So you need to decide if you are going to trade off the retirement for another benefit. You should know how that is going to be handled for tax consequences, and you may want to consider whether or not to trade off that potential asset for some other benefit. You also need to know the 20/20 rule for TRICARE. If 20 years of the marriage overlaps 20 years of service, then your spouse can remain in TRICARE after the marriage ends. They will enroll the DFAS program, they’ll get their own number, and this will be an ongoing benefit for them.
If the marriage is 20 years or longer, and there’s 20 years or more of military service, but only 15 years of the two overlap, then your spouse can remain on TRICARE, but only for a year. You also need to consider child support. The child support is not calculated off of just the base pay. You need to consider the housing allowance, food allowance, and any other special pay that the military members receiving. Since all of these are cash benefits, they need to be factored in when running the child support guidelines.
