Opinion ID: 2435790
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of 1990 Amendment

Text: Because we hold that the residuary clause was effective to award the community retirement benefits to Alene, our evaluation of how the 1990 amendment applies differs greatly from the court of appeals' analysis. The community part of the unaccrued and unmatured military retirement benefits were subject to division as a marital property asset. Under state law, Alene owns the retirement benefits because of the property settlement contract incorporated into the divorce judgment. For the 1990 amendment to the Former Spouses' Protection Act to mean that the divorce judgment did not treat the military retirement, Congress would have had to intend that residuary clauses legally effective under state law were nullified by the amendment about military retirement benefits. Put another way, Congress would have had to intend that military retirement benefits the divorce decree already gave to a party years ago under applicable state law were taken away by enactment of the statute. Nothing on the face of the federal statute requires such a result. The statute's language just as easily leads to the conclusion that a state court judgment effective to award community military retirement treats military retirement. Construing the statute to take away the existing award would violate a primary principle of federal statutory constructionthat in construing federal statutes courts should strive to leave state family law unaltered. As the Supreme Court stated: On the rare occasion when state family law has come into conflict with a federal statute, this Court has limited review under the Supremacy Clause to a determination whether Congress has positively required by direct enactment that state law is preempted. A mere conflict in words is not sufficient. State family and family-property law must do major damage to clear and substantial federal interests before the Supremacy Clause will demand that state law be overridden.... The pertinent questions are whether the right as asserted conflicts with the express terms of federal law and whether its consequences sufficiently injure the objectives of the federal program to require nonrecognition. Hisquierdo v. Hisquierdo, 439 U.S. 572, 581, 583, 99 S.Ct. 802, 808, 809, 59 L.Ed.2d 1 (1979)(internal quotations and citations omitted). We may harmonize the statute with state law by enforcing the divorce judgment's award of military retirement benefits, giving effect to a property settlement agreement incorporated into an existing judgment, and acknowledging that the legislative history expressly sanctions the result. The legislative purpose was to preclude reopening a final divorce judgment. Here we do not reopen a divorce decree, but allow Alene to enforce the award made to her under the decree. We conclude that the residuary clause of the divorce decree treats military retirement benefits within the meaning of 10 U.S.C. § 1408(c)(1).