Tenn. Ex-wife Faces Bureaucratic Nightmare Collecting Military Pension
Tennessee law case summary on military divorce pensions after divorce from the Court of Appeals.
Michael Daniel Fry v. Yuriko Shinoda Fry – Tennessee divorce military pension.
The husband and wife were divorced in 2000 after a ten-year marriage. The husband was retired from the U.S. Navy, and half of his military pension that had vested during the marriage was awarded to the wife. The wife attempted to collect her portion from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, but she was unsuccessful because the decree did not provide a specific amount or formula as required. The wife then filed a petition with the trial court to amend the decree.
The trial court modified the order to provide a more specific formula, but also provided that if the Defense Department didn’t honor the order, that the husband was required to pay wife 50% of any benefits received. The husband brought an appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, and the Court of Appeals reversed. The Court of Appeals agreed with the husband that this last provision was a substantive change to the order.
In 2012, the wife brought another motion to amend the judgment, since the defense department was still unable to act on the order, since it didn’t comply with the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act, since it was expressed in years rather than months, as required by the Act.
The trial court denied the motion, since it held that it lacked the authority to do so. The trial court did state that it “hopes that the Court of Appeals will grant” the requested relief. The wife brought another appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals in the hopes that it would do exactly that.
The Court of Appeals agreed, and ordered the requested change. It found that the 2000 divorce decree clearly called for the wife to receive half of the retirement pay, but that this was frustrated only by the trial court’s failure to use the exact language that was required. It pointed out that the wife was not trying to relitigate anything. She was merely trying to get what she was entitled to receive under the original order. The court remanded the case for an order awarding the wife the military pay. It also added that if the wife were unable to do so, that the husband should be ordered to send the wife her half of the benefits each month, within ten days of receiving them. It also directed the court to calculate the amounts due her so far, and issue a judgment against the husband for that amount.
No. M2012-01541-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Sept. 6, 2013).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
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