Source: https://familylaw.typepad.com/virginiafamilylawappeals/military/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:29:37+00:00

Document:
Evidence related to wife’s inappropriate e-mail exchanges with husband’s superior officer, her reports to authorities of alleged professional misconduct by her husband (reports that ultimately were deemed unsubstantiated by those authorities), and the circumstances surrounding husband’s decision not to accept the promotion to Wing Commander provided a sufficient basis for a reasonable factfinder to conclude that wife was less than supportive of husband’s career.
The Court also upheld the refusal to include in the retirement-division order a requirement to indemnify the wife for reducing disposable retired pay by electing disability. Though that was considered legal at that time, nothing required the trial court to do so.
Survivor benefits: Code § 20-107.3(G)(2) gives the court discretion to award any survivor benefit, or not to.
The opinion includes many other points about appellate procedure, life insurance beneficiary designations, and conservatorship, but I don't believe they break any new ground.
The U.S Supreme Court decided in Howell v. Howell, May 15, 2017, that any kind of disability pay could not be divided, directly or indirectly, even where the servicemember, 13 years after retirement and 14 years after the divorce, took regular retired pay that had already been divided by a court order, and converted 20% of it to disability pay when retiring with a 20% disability rating.
That reflected existing law, but it also clarified that a state court could not order the retiree to compensate or indemnify the former spouse for this change. It disagreed with most state courts that had considered the question, and with the U.S. Solicitor General.
This conversion of a percentage of retired pay is a “V.A. Waiver.” It is required when applying for partial disabled pay with less than a 50% disability rating.
However, the Howells did not have any provision for such reimbursement in their PSA. The outcome could well have been different if they did.
Virginia has a statute allowing later rewording of a pension-division order “only for the purpose of establishing or maintaining the order as a qualified domestic relations order or to revise or conform its terms so as to effectuate the expressed intent of the order.” Code § 20-107.3 K 4. But it is hard to see how the Howell decision leaves any room for that which Virginia’s appellate courts would try to use.
In some other states, this kind of change has been used as grounds for modifying alimony. In re Marriage of Jennings, 138 Wash. 2d 612, 980 P.2d 1248 (1999); Longanecker v. Longanecker, 782 So. 2d 406 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2001).
But state courts have also ruled that an alimony modification cannot simply be a dollar-for-dollar reallocation of the retired pay that the disability conversion has taken away. In re Marriage of Cassinelli, 4 Cal. App. 5th 1285, 210 Cal. Rptr. 3d 311 (Calif. Ct. App. 2016); In re Marriage of Perkins v. Perkins, 107 Wn. App. 313, 26 P.3d 989 (Wash. Ct. App. 2001).
Both kinds of state-court holdings make sense in light of Virginia law and the purpose of spousal support. A spousal support award cannot be used for property-division, and would not probably not be a modification of an equitable distribution order within the scope of Va. Code § 20-107.3 K 4, even though it usually would be modifying literally the same order (since alimony and retired-pay division are part of the divorce decree even when there is a separate retired-pay order to send to DFAS). But alimony modification – as long as jurisdiction is reserved for it – is properly based on changes in overall income, and a V.A. Waiver could produce enough of a change in the former spouse’s income that spousal support modification could be warranted. But the modification would look at all income and expenses at the time.
In trials and in settlements, reserve jurisdiction to modify or award spousal support, even if it is limited to a V.A. Waiver situation. That would make sense where retired pay is a major expected part of the former spouse’s income, and is effectively a substitute for alimony.
Keep using indemnification/reimbursement clauses in PSAs.
Mother’s family connections on the West Coast, including her mother who would help care for the children and an aunt in Arizona who could be available in an emergency.
Father’s mental health condition made him unable to care for the children for extended periods.
Inconsistently with that, but importantly, the trial court had protected the father-child relationship as much as possible by ordering the most equal sharing possible of the children’s time, giving father all summer with them in Virginia and liberal visits in California.
The trial court did not give the mother any preference under the Virginia Military Parents Equal Protection Act, such as a different burden of proof. It took the facts, including those related to her military service, into account when seeking a determination that would be in the best interests of the child.
The father did not have any job that would keep him from moving to California too, nor which contributed to the children’s welfare. He did maintenance work in exchange for living rent-free.
Not all these factors would normally be very persuasive, nor weigh completely in favor of the mother, but they were all viewed differently in the light of the father’s obvious personal problems and inability to function as a custodial parent.
Military pension division, post-separation - Va.Ct.App.
PENSIONS – DIVISION FORMULA. At the trial husband, still on active duty, had proposed dividing his Navy pension by the equitable division of the marital share exactly as the statute says, but adding a paragraph that said that the future monthly amount paid to the wife beginning at the time of his retirement should be her 40% of the marital share as if he had retired on the date of separation, as his date of marital separation base pay and years of creditable service. The trial court refused and struck that paragraph, so that the amounts used would be per the date of his future retirement, so that wife will benefit by husband’s promotions, raises, COLA s , etc., past the date of marital separation. Husband argued that his promotions, etc. would be like post-divorce contributions to a defined benefit retirement plan, or the post-separation earnings that are presumed separate property. His brief appended a DFAS publication and a publication from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center recommending such treatment of post-separation benefits, but these are not binding on Virginia courts, the Court of Appeals says, and Rule 5A: 20 requires more citation of authority in a brief than that. Fox v. Fox, 61 Va App 185, 734 SE 2d 662 (12/4/12).
State court can fix pension-division order after federal government misinterprets it - Va.Ct.App.
PENSIONS – QDRO IMPLEMENTATION, INTERPRETATION – SEPARATION AGREEMENTS – INTERPRETATION – OPM/CIVIL SERVICE POLICIES FRUSTRATING PARTY INTENT – REMEDIES – COURTS’ AUTHORITY. A court has jurisdiction to modify its divorce judgment to effect a workable division of a pension by QDRO under §20-107.3(K)(4), and that includes separation agreement cases, and it includes construing the intended meaning of the contractual clauses, the Court of Appeals points out in Craig v. Craig, 59 Va. App. 527, 721 S.E.2d 24 (2/7/12). But it does not include adding to or changing the contract because of changing circumstances or any other reason, the Court explains, and that distinction provided the subject of the husband-wife dispute wherein the trial court had heard her parol evidence, given the wife what she wanted and awarded her fees, and husband appealed. This was one of those agreements that provided for the wife getting a survivor benefit plan on top of her pension percentage, but called for deducting the SBP premium from her share. OPM, however, construed its regulations to deduct the $810 premium twice, first from his share and then from hers. This odd interpretation disadvantaged wife. Husband said that sounded fine to him. The first question was whether the question posed even fit within subsection (K)(4), because if not, the trial court did not even have jurisdiction to make any interpretations of the contract, much less modify it. Interestingly, both sides argued that the contract was unambiguous – so why wasn’t that end of story? Well, because even in that situation the courts can still resolve questions of application intent, the Court of Appeals explains, when an unforeseen and illogical interpretation comes along that would nevertheless be totally inconsistent with the obvious intent, and one party nevertheless says he (now) agrees with it. Somebody has to be there to say what’s right and what isn’t. The court concluded that at the time of formation, both parties intended the use of words (like “gross amount”) in their ordinary sense, rather than the weird one that CSRS/OPM under its own regulations was applying. The Court of Appeals quotes from a previous and almost identical case called Recker v. Recker, 48 Va. App. 188, 629 S.E.2d 191 (2006), 26/2 FLN 31, which involved this kind of off-the-wall interpretation. It went through the ordinary and dictionary meanings of the word “gross,” and said that the ordinary meaning is the one these parties clearly intended. Husband tried an ingenuous attempt to distinguish Recker, pointing out that that consent decree did not specifically mention CSRS (which this one did), but referred to husband’s “specific branch of the Federal Government Retirement & Disability System.” The Court of Appeals responded that “in order to accept husband’s position, we must conclude that wife agreed to have the survivor annuity costs ($810) deducted twice from her share.” It concluded, based on the clear language of the agreement, that the parties intended that the $810 should be deducted only once. This kind of interpretation and modification is authorized by §20-107.3(K)(4), because it modifies a QDRO in order to “conform its terms so as to effectuate the expressed intent of the Order, and does so consistently with the substantive provisions of the original decree.” The Court reiterates that it can’t do this just because of change of circumstances. The Court also rules that it was all right to accept parol evidence from the wife, even to construe an unambiguous agreement. It’s true that parol evidence is inadmissible to contradict, add to or even explain the terms of a complete and unambiguous written agreement, but the Court of Appeals notes that wife’s testimony here did not attempt to alter the terms, but merely stated them in her testimony. The fee award was reversed, because the husband’s contentions were not frivolous and he relied in part on Court of Appeals cases that had caused the scratching of not a few heads at the time, such as Duva v. Duva, 55 Va. App. 286, 685 S.E.2d 842 (2009). The West’s Headnote Number 14 to this case makes the especially helpful observation that the purpose of subsection (K)(4) in giving trial courts continuing jurisdiction to modify “is to protect the interests of pension recipients from the unintended consequences of improperly or incomplete [sic] drafted pension orders.” While the text paragraphs signaled with numbers 13 and 14 did not exactly use these words as the Court of Appeals’s own, they do quote our Family Law Section’s Report on pension division in divorce proceedings from 1991, House Document No. 19, which says this. And although those nice words don’t exactly fit what was done in the Craig case, they are themselves embodied in the appellate court’s quotation from a previous opinion called Irwin v. Irwin, 47 Va. App. 287, 623 S.E.2d 438 (2005), to the effect that the statutory reservation allows a court to revise its orders to comply with the language required by federal law to effectuate the intended pension award. And while that doesn’t necessarily hit the Craig case mark either, it’s helpful to have these additional prongs of statutory authority explained.
A useful ruling on when military service does and does not prejudice the serviceperson's ability to defend the case is Flynn v. Great Atlantic Management Co., ___ Va. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___, 8 VLW 40 (6/11/93). The holding is that "I was on leave outside the area" just won't do it.

References: § 20
 v. 
 § 20
 v. 
 v. 
 § 20
 v. 
 §20
 v. 
 v. 
 §20
 v. 
 v. 
 v.