protection act does not authorize state courts to treat waived military retirement pay as divisible property in divorce the question in this case is whether mansell's holding applies only to waivers that preceded the divorce or whether it applies to all waivers no matter when they occur and we respectfully submit that the latter interpretation is correct and i'd like to make two points this morning one is that we think the text of the statute compels our interpretation and the second is that we think our interpretation just makes sense so our first argument is based on the text and i think it's just inescapable that what the state court did here was divide petitioners wait retirement pay and i think that can be seen from the fact that if the states courts order had simply just said henceforth petitioners waived retirement pay is now divided if that's those are the words of the modification order there would have been no difference at all in effect than what actually occurred in the modifications so  modification order had simply said you have to pay a dollar amount equal to the amount that way if that was the modification order we think the same preemption concern would exist because that's an economic equivalent of a division of no i could i think justice stop to ensure that that is received by her she'll get two hundred fifty dollars a month from his military retirement so if that was a settlement then i think that it would be  enforceable our position today has nothing to do with the enforcement of settlements in this case the divorce court said that the settlement as written only authorized responded to receive half of petitioners pension that's why it modified it but if the original order had simply specified a dollar i think that that would be a modification imposed by the court that would be that petition never agreed to so he's never waived this protection she can go back into court i thought in divorce court you can go back and change circumstances the answer that there's a difference in the just an element of payments and property and and property settlements that have been concluded yes justice kennedy absolutely we don't read the us s p a is interfering with state courts power over alimony and i think we express property and here's a federal statute which is defining the expos as property interest as half of the residual share of the pension so this is a pretty basic question i should know the answer to but when you talk about dividing the property is  any proportion you get two thirds one third it's not doesn't have to be fifty fifty that's correct to arizona's a community property state and so property is almost invariably divided fifty fifty there are some exceptions which are not a political to this case other states equitable division states sometimes deviate from fifty fifty divisions but even if it was sixty forty i think there would still be a division of property it would just be an unequal division problem is it a community property law that the fifty percent that the spouse  the retirement pay was hers even if they hadn't been divorced in other words what is community property i thought community property is the two spouses interest in the in that case i'll ask him but that the divorce decree changes nothing it simply gave her what was hers yes that is our interpretation of the divorce so how could she take any action that in a pinch is a what's her money or her property right well i think that's the us is position in your adversary's which is if as a result of the original settlement the divorce decree it became her property what right did he have any to take any action that would remove that property or take it away from her well i think the question is what is her property right and you're right that if you define her property right as one half of the total retirement it regardless of whether a waiver has occurred then yes under that conception of her that being her property right in fact petitioner would have converted part of her property right but the point is the federal statute what i think it's saying is it doesn't allow the state court to define the community property right that way what it's saying is the definition of the community property right is the total amount of the retirement pay minus the waived portion and so if the state court in fact that's actually what the state court did in the petition appendix pages twelve and thirteen a and what it's saying is that respondents property rights was half of the total retirement pay but i think that's exactly what this federal definition is designed to prevent state courts from doing so you know i think that's why i think that it's just inescapable that what happened in this case was just a flat out division of petitioners we've retirement pay and so that's why we view this as just a direct conflict with federal law i don't think the court needs to even get to implied preemption and purposes and objectives we think this is just doing what the thing that federal law says that state courts can't do what about then saying we divided we open so we can give her more of another thing to make up for like she's missing so i think that reopening the decree to just give her another asset would be which is essentially what happened in this case would be preempted by federal law and now we're not saying federal law preempt a situation where state court says ok we're going to find as a matter of state law that the experts just didn't understand what she was signing for some kind of mutual mistake so it's the reopening of the decree would not be preempted in that case if the parties just reached a new settlement that would be you have some other property i think that that would essentially render a dead letter because you know just returning to the pre divorce context the facts of man's cell where the waiver happened before the divorce it seems to me that if a divorce court just said i'm going to raise the equitable share by the exact amount of the waiver as i just don't agree with man selling i want to nullify it i mean that would just directly conflict with the whole point of mansell's holding which is that the waiver of the retirement pay lowers the amount of visible property and also hasten to add that that that is not what happened here arizona is not an equitable division state i think the court was saying that all the assets have to be divided fifty fifty just to find the relevant assets subject to division as the total amount of the military retirement pay which i think is just contrary to the federal definition of could a court say well in light of the fact that the woman is not getting the usual community property division that that factor  could that that could factor into the determination of alimony or the determination of child support so i think it actually could yes i think that if the situation for the court was you know because of this waiver i just i can't afford daycare payments for the child and i responsible for them and you can come back to court saying i need child support that's a need based issue it's not a property division then yes this is the saving clause of the statute carves out child support and alimony orders from the preemptive force so i think that as long as the court is applying child support alimony standards which are based on need it's based on their usually temporary until the child becomes the age of majority or you know the wife gets back or the husband gets back on his or her feet so as long as the court is actually applying the alimony and child support standards we actually all of his disability pay both in form and in substance i think it makes sense that congress would have wanted veterans to keep all their disability pay for the obvious reason that it's the veteran who is disabled and the point of the disability pay a substitute for income that the veteran can't earn because of his or her disability that's how it's defined you get a disability rating if you have reduced income potential and so i think that this makes perfect sense i think everyone agrees that the veteran should keep the disability the reason this dispute has come up is that congress has made this decision to cut veterans pensions or to force a veteran to waive a portion of his own pension which is already been earned if he also becomes disabled and accepts the disability and that's a pretty harsh judgment that congress made essentially to protect the public fisc but that's what congress did so i think that what the statute is doing is saying if the veteran is forced to do that then the veteran and the x files will both have their amounts reduced by an equal amount in other words what's the visible i just going to be the residual share so i think that's what the statute is doing and then if you frame it that way i think it makes perfect sense to treat the pre divorce scenario and the post war scenario as parallel because i don't think that the goal of protecting disability pay really has anything to do with the timing of the disability relative to the divorce in other words if you have two disabled veterans and they're both divorced i think that their interest in keeping their disability pay is the same even if one of them happened to become disabled the year before his divorce and the other one happened to become disabled the year afterwards so i think that you know framed in those terms i think that the purpose of arguments don't distinguish between the pre divorce and the post where there's a problem is really when people are getting divorced and they already know they can't divide up the disability pay that the courts have a full sure and can then determine alimony and child custody with those factors in min and we presume that at the time of their divorce this woman was relying on a certain amount of income that would be fixed for the rest of her life and she planned her life around that income and he has now taken an act independent of her and not just reducing her income but with her reduction of income he's also getting a tax benefit so he's getting a you know whatever twenty percent a third more than she is by this unilateral act in terms of policy that is a substantially different impact well and one that you know the government's taking the saying to you as a matter of policy is that right well i think i don't know i mean i don't know the answer of legally but is there is a difference in terms of what congress might have expected or not expect well first of all it's not really clear to me that the policy interests are so much stronger post divorce than pre divorce they're different but i'm not sure they're stronger i mean there's certainly a lot of equitable arguments in the pre divorce context i mean these are typically spouses for longer marriages who often relied on the disability pay during property in that case has its own harshness now i think there's been a different point is the divorce court will know if he's already getting disability pay then her share of the pension will be so much less and with that now if she would divorce court can say so i'm going to give her more of some of the property so i don't think the divorce court can do that in that context because then mansell would be essentially a dead letter in other words if the divorce court said well you know this this person waived his retirement pay and you know i don't like that and so you know i don't agree with the man so rule so i'm just going to increase the equitable share to just balance out the waiver when i think they don't have to and the judge doesn't have to say that well i mean i mean right i mean the alimony there are all there's not a set  number that has to be and it seems to me that it may be a situation where you're certainly going to take into account the whole picture and i think it would be perhaps a reasonable for the judge to say well i'm going to look at everything with figuring out the amount of alimony but i'm not going to look at the fact that he's getting you know disability pay that may be and so we if a court could do that before the decree we also think the court can do that after the all we're saying is that before the decree the court couldn't just adjust dollar for dollar to compensate for  set in alimony and child support it just can't take into account this rule when distributing other kinds of property is that right destroying property yes i mean alimony and child support really a property distribute right you're making a distinction between need based payments and property division yes that instinct and and this rule can be taken into account in the former but not in the latter right and that's the same pre and post divorce were just wrong no distinction between the original degree and a modification mr chief justice and it please the court the authority granted to the states by the former spouses protection act to treat marital to treat military retirement pay as property and divided necessarily operates at the time of the divorce the text of the act its primary purpose to protect the former spouse and the practical realities of divorce make the time of divorce paramount that is when family court must determine the extent of all of the marital property divide that property and also coordinate the multiple moving parts of a divorce which include spousal maintenance which is often intertwined with the division of property now the authority to divide military retirement pay is limited only by the actually exclusion of amounts of retirement pay that are then being deducted as the result of a previous waiver to receive disability benefits and whether that division at the time of divorce occurs before the members retirement as the statute expressly allows and therefore before any waiver has occurred or the division occurs after retirement the state law of consequences of the property division must follow along and those consequences can include the fact that the in a particular state that the retirement pay awarded to a spouse is considered to be that spouse's vested property and also the consequential right of the state to formulate remedies to protect and effect that property right to compensate for any damage that might be done to that property interest and another consequence i had that i think has come up here today is is that of the finality of the divorce decree and whether the state court has the ability go back and modify after a waiver of retirement pay in favor of disability pay to go back and modify a division of property i would i would it what is the general answer to that i mean there again there's a distinction between the finale of division of with respect to property as opposed to some other supposed to cash i guess or for income is is there a difference i think there is i think the general answer your honor is that the a decree dividing to the extent it divides property is final and for good reason and in arizona certainly when there is a settlement agreement as there was here and it then becomes incorporated into the divorce decree  it's impossible i would say to go back and modify the division of property you know one of the objectives of family law courts is to a chief anality and not have folks coming back in the future of certainly child support and spousal maintenance can be exceptions but there has to be a substantial and continuing change of circumstances in order to justify revisiting reopening modifying support or spousal maintenance but but property division is is thought to be set in stone at the time of divorce the the spouses are splitting the sheets and the court must determine how many sheets there are and how big they are and decide who gets what and what that is just what is decided at that point in time is what they have going forward and neither one can do anything to affect what was that community property that was divided and then becomes now the separate property of each of those spouses and opposed the only asset is the pension then with the family court order here be permissible i'm sorry supposing that the retirement is the only house retirement the only asset and your question is well then what would the family court order here be proper yes the order here to indemnify to create a remedy here of course whether it's the only asset or not but certainly in that hypothetical because her community property interest has been transformed into her separate property interest and then unilaterally damaged by the actions of her ex husband well how do you deal with your adversaries position that her borrowing from our prior case that the only reasonable expectation that the or or she could have had was that his military pay was always subject to a potential to action for disability  basically his or even that the b tells anyone relying on military pay that it can as a matter of law be changed by a disability award i disagree with my friend because i know you do the question is how it is well congress gave the states the right to treat this kind of property according to state law and therefore you know going along without when in a community property state or in any state whatever the property scheme may be the court gets to divide what was then before the court and in this situation there had been no waiver  whatsoever and so the court is looking at making a looking at the big picture has as a couple of you have referenced they're looking at all of the assets and making and by the way it's an equitable division in arizona  it's not an even division as in california another community property state and the court is doing what is equitable and trying to balance of the division of property among them once having done that the die is is is joe give sam the husband but by that time it turns out to be elite i mean from the beginning uncle joe leaves property in a form that it's illegal to give to the world i could imagine cases that are i mean you can the state give money that later on it turns out that it was absolutely illegal to give that person that money i mean i don't know how that works i would be very surprised every student caught her and of course cases says ok i'm sorry we have a degree here and then we're going to violate federal law because the decree violates federal law as it turns out well as i understand your hype maybe  complicate it if you're talking about a state court if i think it is a federal law here in the federal law says i'm very sorry you cannot give this money to the spouse for good reason or bad perhaps bad but it says you can't and is the fact that you gave that money to the spouse ahead of time why does that matter that's his argument and been there are two things going on here and and one of them is at the time of this divorce and many divorces there is no disability benefits there is a dire is a disability the disability is that if it turns out that what you have are giving over time is money that was turned in to get the disability it is illegal for you to do it that's what's there at the time of the decree you know that the what is illegal is the division of retirement pay that has already been waived to receive disability no it's not what it says in the statute it says in the statute that it is illegal to treat disposable retired pay as property of the member and his spouse that is what is now legal that's legal right with an exception the exception is the result of a waiver of retired pay that you can't do so you can't do it on day one you can't do it on day twenty you can't do it on da thirty and what they're saying is a well known property interest it is an interest that you do not get till day forty but you can't divided on day one just like it's like you know there used to be these property interests that you received on a contingency the statute in subsection do you want in the last sentence contemplates the division of military retirement pay even before the service member has retired and therefore before there could have been any waiver and any disability benefits take that true so it's given to her but it's subject under federal law to a contingency we used to have our first year property fast filled with this kind of stuff i mean you know somebody would get a horse but he'd only get the horse on the contingency that uncle joe died which doesn't happen for thirty years but nonetheless there's something that happens to that property subject to the contingency on day one that's what this sounds like to me and i respectfully disagree it's funny because it also says it doesn't speak in an in the form of a contingency as i read it it speaks in the form of authorizing the state to divide the retirement pay according to state law at the time of the divorce and if at that time there is no disability the retirement pay as women wave no disability benefits are being claimed they are being divided what's being divided unnecessarily so is the expectation of this retirement and and for good reason because all these moving parts have to be somehow balanced equitably between  spouses the state court gets to say you get fifty percent or you get x dollar amount or you get x percentage and i doesn't have to be fifty fifty but whatever it is the state court decides that in its wisdom at that moment in distribution of property being made this decree divided the military retirement pay fifty fifty and that part of this decree was never changed when the court issued its remedy order to for mis for the benefit of mrs holl the fifty fifty division still remained but that fifty percent had become worth less and by the unilateral action of the husband so he was ordered to make a make up payment to her to reimburse her for her loss it really wasn't a modification of the decree at all by the way well that's it it was an enforcement maybe this isn't that but that's very legal listed in the sense that you're saying well you can't divide this which you have to pay or money so that she's put in the same position as if you divided this isn't yours so well she you know i understand the the parallel that my colleague draws and that you suggest in your question but that it's not a legal equivalent it's practically there's no way to escape the fact that it's dollar for dollar because it wouldn't make any sense to apply were a remedy for a lesser or greater amount than what she lost if i were a legislator and i passed this law for a particular purpose and at the end of the day the result is the same as if the law hadn't had any it has no practical effect at all i would think that's contrary to what the legislation was designed to accomplish but you as a legislature sitting across the street adopted this to protect that spouse and to enable states to divide the retirement pay as property according to state law at the time of the divorce well maybe i'm the one who insisted on the part of the law that says when it's disability you don't get to divide that if it has already been waived it cannot be divided but here when she divorced it had not been waived there is no written disability to divide and none was divided and i think we should not lose sight of the fact that these parties made an agreement this wasn't something that was litigated in adjudicated it was the product of a supplement agreement and implicit agreement is a covenant of good faith and fair dealing and that one will not do anything in it in his discretion to injure the contract benefits of the of the other the wife and yet he not suggesting that but whenever it was the agreement goes on far longer than that and as i think was suggested in your caller's question just a sort of my or that  there was an expectation that this wife had and it was basically a rooted in that settlement agreement that they made so and certainly mamselle doesn't preempt the right of spouses to to make agreements for the division of their community property it may prohibit an agreement for the division of retirement pay that has already been waived to receive disability benefits that much is clear but that is the extent of the preemption or the military pays her fifty percent minus the disability pay and he has to pay separately the difference exactly and it from it doesn't matter if it were where he gets it from each you know he has his share of the military retirement pay and it can legitimately come from larry and you may not know this i don't know if it's in the record does he have a job out of the disability he know he can pay it out of his share of the military retirement pay his it let's say that you know he was getting when they divorced it was all military retirement one hundred percent and let's say gets reduced by twenty percent by virtue of his disability rating so he still has forty percent as she of the original retirement pay he can pay her out of his forty percent of that retirement pay he can also pay her out of other assets he is he is not directed to pay her out of disability benefits and this is not a situation where the record reflects that he has no other assets and in it he indeed he he has his share of the  retirement i think it's key that congress gave the states the right to divide retirement pay at the time of divorce according to the respective state law and when that happens the divided interest are vested in each of the parties does does not violate the act it does not preempt state law it does not effectively divide disability benefits and to a point raised by my colleague the order is is not one that modify the decree at all it was an enforcement order now i know you might say that the arizona supreme court characterized it as a modification the court did so for a different reason it was deciding whether a state statute regarding modification applied it determined that it did not but it first determined that there was a modification because there was no indication provision in the decree but for purposes of this act a modified to create is defined in the definitions as a a court order that effects a division of property there was no division of property effected by the indemnification order it was instead in the nature of an enforcement in fact the arizona supreme court at least twice refers to it as a reimbursement order or an indemnification order or a make up payment it was in forcing it never changed anything in the original divorce decree so it was not a modification for purposes of the act what should the rule be given the concern of congress for former spouses congress could not have intended to allow a service member to a to obtain a divorce divide the m r p and then apply for disability benefits and waive m r p and leave the former spouse without a state court well it's the concern for former spouses is certainly evident in the act but as we've always said no statute pursues its purpose at all costs and there was obviously a different purpose applicable with respect to the part of the law that says you can't divide disability payments so i don't think it was sort to the purpose of the statute in a general sense to to resolve every subsidiary legal issue but the primary purpose according to congress was to protect the spouse you know in a subsidiary purpose was to do so in a way that preserved disability payments and didn't allow them to be divided to be divided but and this is again a situation a case in which there were no disability benefits to divide at the time of divorce when her property rights were vested in her this court should therefore hold that the division of military retirement pa is determined according to state law at the time of divorce and that in order remedying damage to such a share is not preempted by the act thank you counsel the subsequent waiver shrinks the pot that is available for the remedy but it doesn't change or dictate what division the state court had to take either in the first instance or in giving a remedy to the former spouse so we take a broader view know the state courts ability to respond to changes in circumstance whether that change be because of a waiver of star waiver of disability benefits or any other reason and that the act's primary function is to leave law the ability to equitably divide these assets and the first to explain this easier time if you can explain it with the decree says is fifty percent of the retirement goes to the husband and fifty percent to the  y it doesn't say with the return that it suppose that ten years later government raises the retirement does the wife get more so you are i believe under your honour's hypothetical the answer is yes  so once again under it depends on state law so i would have answered that a lot in other words in other words if you say that fifty percent goes to the wife fifty percent goes to the husband of ways one is it can equitably divide those assets in any way it sees fit from zero to one hundred percent to oppose it saturated following men so that the wife cannot have more than fifty percent of the actual  says if taxes go up or if the payments are reduced for retirement under no circumstances can the wife obtain more than the reduced pay half the reduced payment have to keep the wife's share at no more than fifty percent but let's forget about that there's a federal statute to that effect we'll have our state law can't do that can i understand your honour's question which is that there's only military retirement pay and the question is can i think that's a significant difference that's the only i'm so in other words if it says no you cannot give the wife more than fifty percent of the pension then what they could do is have the decree and it says the wife gets fifty percent  can't you can i give them more than fifty percent i'm getting mixed up in my it's as you can i get more than fifty percent and then there's a statute says you can't give you can't give sixty percent but the judge says here's what i'll do i'll give you fifty percent from this and i'd like to give you more than sixty percent so i'm going to take ten percent from something else well i think that the economic equivalence is not the only test and that's the test that petitioner wants this court to adopt i think this court needs to look at the legal basis for the award and as the discussion highlighted earlier there are many legal economically equivalent ways that a court can reach the same division of property in total financial transfer from one party to the other some of which are legal und of which are not it seems to me that in other words they're saying you're basically saying there's no real substance to this law all the court has to do is find some charade to get to the same result for you i mean would it be all right under your view if they say ok you get fifty percent of all there are no disability payments yet you get fifty percent of the retirement pay this is a quick but in the event that there is disability pay there are disability payments that was all to a reduction of the military pay i appreciate that i cannot divide the disability pay she does he or she does exactly what i set forth she's ok you're entitled to half but if there's disability pay you're intitled to an additional amount exactly equal to half of the disability pay but yes i think th contemplates fix some awards and so you have a law that says you have a law that says you can't divide disability pay and yet you say it's ok to say we're not going to divide it but i'm just going to award you an amount equal to what it would be if i divided it well let me make this sort of thing that gives you a lot bad name if it's just it makes a charade out of the stable we honor and i respectfully submit that state courts have a lot of experience and treating differently separate property marital property separate income property interest that is the kind of bread and butter that state courts those kind of distinctions are the bread and butter that state courts apply their own state law to and so this little what does that have to do with my question so the question is your honor in terms of the ability your honor was concerned that the state court order could be a sham but steve courts are in the practice of treating as and defining and treating as what is the quantum of marital property and fairly applying those state rules so what the spousal protection  does is it throws to the state court the broad authority to treat disposable retirement pay as marital property along with all of the civil assets having made that division and given that broader authority to divide the property presumably it comes with that the ability to enforce that division and the spouses now separate property interest are presumably given the bundle of rights that the state would normally give to protect it and the law does something else too it says you cannot divide disability that the law prohibits so long as we don't say it's divided so we take half of it and add it to the required military well your honor we don't i don't interpret your honour's hypothetical as a division of property i interpret your honors and hypothetical as getting a contention  property that may be available the work that money is money whether it be the additional amount from the disability pay or from something else doesn't make a difference when you're on a money is that money when the state quarter originally had the if the broad discretion to allocate anywhere from zero percent to one hundred percent of not only the civilian assets but the disposable retirement hand the first and i think the question is can a state to part in a state court depart from the rule that the state court would use in dividing property solely for the purpose of making up for the fact that the disability payment cannot be divided now and so i thought that's what you were saying they could do no your honor i think that th court can use its broadly applicable rules for enforcing existing property divisions in this case the arizona rule is one that prohibits a party from unilaterally harming the interests of the other spouse and gives a make up remedy but there are still important protections that the spouses protection act gives to disability benefits no matter what the anti attachment provisions this isn't a special protection act other federal law which is the anti attachment provision protects disability benefits from any kind of award supreme court the court interpreted the decree to say that what it did was it divided petitioners pension whatever it was and that is a ruling that i think we have to accept as this case reaches the court that's a state law interpretation which binds this court and so with the court held however is that it was not going to enforce the degree as written it was going to import the state will log rule that basically says that the relevant divisible as it was the total amount of the retirement pay and divide that and i think the court is quite clear in saying that it c the property interest as the total amount of money that petitioner was receiving and it said that by waiving retirement paid petitioner converted a portion of respondents property and so it's saying is that respondent holds a property interest in half of that we did now so that's for consideration there's actually a lot of reported cases in which a consideration being aware of this possible give me a nation lawyer for the for the spouse will say i don't right now well i mean the veteran doesn't have to agree to that i mean the settlements bilateral and if the veteran doesn't agree then they'll just go to divorce court and there will be a decree were the court we would say would have to just divide the retirement pay as mandated by congress now we agree that settlements are good and there have been many reported cases where the veterans as look all make you this promise if you agree to give me you know the car or whatever so we're not we're not reading the statue's impinging on settlements but in this case the court held that what the settlement was was just dividing the pension whatever it was fifty fifty the fact that petitioners required to pay this reimbursement order it's not what he had agreed to it's this order imposed by state law saying there is going to treat respondent as holding a property interest in half of the amount of the way of retirement pay which we think is what the federal statute prohibits and in response to just a sort of i r s question earlier yes i think that the reasonable expectation is that the waivers might occur i think it's important to recognize that we have years of retirement pay for disability are not rare or obscure there's hundreds of thousands of veterans who have done just that and i don't think it's a tremendous shock to an experienced divorce lawyer that this might happen and so during negotiations for a divorce settlement this may come up so i just think the idea that you know there's no way to predict this could conceivably happen i think is just inconsistent with the reality of divorce litigation in military divorces i'd like to respond to the comment of counsel about other assets that it's perfectly fine to divide the equivalent of disability as long as you just other assets used to fund so first of all i think that's quite contrary to this court's decision in helman and several other cases i think it's both counterintuitive and i think that the holding of those cases is that you can't do that because just the four corners of  the human holding was that you know federal law prints a statute that doesn't directly act on property but just has property go into a bank account and then is transferred to the other bank account which is essentially the same situation as here and i think it's also quite pertinent that when the statute says is that it's division of a wave retirement pay that's impermissible and recall that waive retirement pay literally is not money you're getting that the definition of waive retirement pay literally is the money that you're not getting so you can get disability pay so when you talk about dividing way of retirement pay with just that inherently means it's forcing you to pay an amount from your general assets equal to that with retirement paid to the other spouse so i just think that you know it's not even just legal listed i just think the statute cannot be construed to permit operations on the general assets and i just want to make one other point and justice or my or ask questions earlier about sort of the policy distinctions between pre and post divorce waivers and we're not denying that there is no policy distinctions at all and i mean we can't deny that of course there are differences in policy and i think that the interests of the disabled veteran is the same before and after but there are policy distinctions at stake i think the question this case is whether this statute can be interpreted to recognize that those and distinguish between those two scenarios and i just don't think you can get it out of the statutory text which does prohibit waved retirement pay from being treated as divisible matter when the waiver occurs if the court is no further questions will rest thank you couns