Opinion ID: 2834586
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Did This Decree Divide VA Disability Pay?

Text: Military retirement pay and Veterans Administration disability pay have different purposes and pedigrees. [1] Were we writing on a clean slate, I might agree that this decree dividing retirement pay did not divide VA disability pay. But we are not writing on a clean slate. This Court held in 1990 in Berry v. Berry that a decree dividing military retirement pay did divide VA disability pay that arose later. [2] In Berry , we required a veteran to keep paying 25 percent of his total benefits to his ex-wife even after most of those benefits were converted to VA disability pay. The Court says that decree did not divide VA disability pay, but merely required that “the wife was to be paid an amount computed on the husband’s gross retirement pay before deductions.” [3] That is not what we said at the time, explicitly stating that the lower courts erred by “refusing to enforce the final divorce decree with respect to Veterans Administration disability benefits.” [4] And to avoid admitting that Berry divided VA disability pay, the Court reinterprets it as a provision for alimony, which Texas courts cannot award. [5] The Berry decree effectively divided VA disability pay, no matter how hard the Court tries to deny it. The decree in Berry divided “Air Force disability retirement pay” while the decree here divided “Army Retirement Pay,” [6] but “disability retirement pay” is defined as “retirement pay,” [7] and the statute providing for it applies to all branches of the armed forces. [8] Because both decrees divided “retirement pay,” it is hard to see why the decree in Berry divided VA disability pay but the decree here did not. Indeed, that was the precise conclusion of the court of appeals. [9] The Court says the decree here is different because it did not divide “gross” retirement pay, as the Berry decree did. But this decree awarded Doris Hagen a portion of “ all Army Retirement Pay.” How can “all retirement pay” mean something less than “gross retirement pay”? Does “all income” mean less than “gross income”? Or “all sales” less than “gross sales”? The Court’s hypertechnical distinction between “all” and “gross” may lead to problems in many areas of the law. The Court finds it significant that in Berry a monthly pay stub included figures for gross retirement pay and then a deduction for VA disability pay. But this observation depends on an anachronism: the statute deducting VA disability pay from gross retirement pay was enacted in 1982, [10] several years after the divorce decrees in Berry and this case. Whatever was meant by “gross” or “all” retirement pay in either decree, it did not include a statutory construct that existed only in the future. At the time these decrees were signed, any military retirement pay (whether standard retirement pay or disability retirement pay) had to be waived dollar-for-dollar to receive VA disability pay. [11] If the Berry decree dividing retirement pay included amounts later waived to receive VA disability pay, then so did this decree. We must either follow Berry or overrule it. For the reasons stated next, we should overrule it.