{"id":72146,"date":"2017-05-18T08:58:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T12:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72146"},"modified":"2017-05-18T08:58:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T12:58:43","slug":"howell-v-howell-ussc-rules-in-favor-of-servicemembers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72146","title":{"rendered":"Howell v. Howell; USSC rules in favor of servicemembers"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Military Times<\/a>, an Arizona court awarded John Howell’s ex-wife Sandra half of his military retirement pay as part of a divorce settlement. In 2005, John was awarded a disability claim from the Veterans’ Affairs Department of about $250\/month. Because the disability was less than 50%, his retirement pay was reduced by that amount, meaning Sandra’s monthly check was reduced by about $125. She went to court to recover that sum and the state court agreed with her.<\/p>\n

John marched the case to the Supreme Court which ruled that the state court couldn’t mandate disability pay in a divorce case because disability benefits are different from retired pay.<\/p>\n

Adam Unikowsky, a lawyer representing John Howell, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in March that Congress intended for veterans to keep their disability pay, as it fills the gap for pay they will no longer be able to make in the future. The goal of protecting a veteran\u2019s pay is not temporal in nature, he said, meaning it has nothing to do with whether the veteran is eligible for disability before or after the divorce.<\/p>\n

He further argued that the U.S. Supreme Court had previously decided, in Mansell v. Mansell, that the Uniformed Services Former Spouses\u2019 Protection Act did not permit state courts to treat retirement pay that had been waived to receive veterans\u2019 disability benefits as something that could be divided.<\/p>\n

Sandra Howell’s lawyer argued that this case was different because her ex-husband hadn’t waived his retirement pay until after the divorce settlement was finalized. But the Supreme Court ruled that state courts did not have the authority to take John\u2019s disability benefits, regardless of its effect on his ex-wife. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure Sandra won’t be out on the street, starving, because of her loss of the $125. She can probably get a job at Walmart to supplement the loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Military Times, an Arizona court awarded John Howell’s ex-wife Sandra half of his military … Howell v. Howell; USSC rules in favor of servicemembers<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}