Opinion ID: 1896603
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Uniformed Services Former Spouses' Protection Act

Text: [¶ 7] Federal law permits a veteran who becomes disabled as a result of military service to receive disability benefits. 38 U.S.C. §§ 1110, 1131 (2000). Veterans who qualify as disabled are permitted to waive their retirement pay and receive a corresponding amount of disability pay instead. 38 U.S.C. § 5305 (2000). Indeed, there is a financial incentive for veterans who qualify for disability benefits to elect disability rather than retirement benefits; the former are exempt from both federal and state income taxes while the latter are not. See id. § 5301(a). [¶ 8] The USFSPA provides that a state divorce court may treat military disposable retired pay . . . as property of the member and his spouse in accordance with the law of the jurisdiction of such court. 10 U.S.C. § 1408(c)(1). The Act's definition of disposable retired pay, however, excludes disability payments that a veteran receives as a result of waiving retirement pay. Id. § 1408(a)(4)(B). [2] [¶ 9] These federal law provisions were considered in Mansell, in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the question of whether state courts, consistent with the [USFSPA], may treat as property divisible upon divorce military retirement pay waived by the retiree in order to receive veterans' disability benefits. 490 U.S. at 583, 109 S.Ct. 2023. In Mansell, the parties were divorced in California in 1979 after a twenty-three year marriage. Id. at 585, 109 S.Ct. 2023. They entered into a property settlement agreement that provided that the husband would pay the wife fifty percent of his total military retirement pay, including that portion of retirement pay waived so that [he] could receive disability benefits. Id. at 585-86, 109 S.Ct. 2023. In other words, the Mansell divorce judgment treated the portion of military retirement pay that had previously been converted to military disability pay as property subject to division. In 1983, the husband filed a motion to modify the judgment, seeking the termination of this provision. Id. at 586, 109 S.Ct. 2023. He asserted that the provision of the judgment awarding the wife a portion of his military retirement pay that had been waived in order to receive disability pay was precluded by the USFSPA. Id. The trial court denied the motion, and the husband lost his state appeal. Id. at 586-87, 109 S.Ct. 2023. The case reached the Supreme Court, which reversed and held that the USFSPA does not grant state courts the power to treat as property divisible upon divorce military retirement pay that has been waived to receive veterans' disability benefits. Id. at 594-95, 109 S.Ct. 2023. Although Mansell arose from a postjudgment motion, the opinion addresses the application of the USFSPA to a prejudgment conversion of retirement pay to disability pay. See id. at 585-86, 109 S.Ct. 2023. [¶ 10] Since Mansell, jurisdictions have divided on the question of whether the USFSPA limits the authority of state courts to grant relief when, as here, a postjudgment conversion of retirement pay to disability pay divests the share of retirement pay allocated to a former spouse in an earlier divorce judgment. [3] Because Mansell explicitly addressed the USFSPA as precluding a state divorce court from treating military retirement pay that had previously been converted to disability pay as property divisible upon divorce, (emphasis added) we agree with those jurisdictions that conclude that the USFSPA does not limit the authority of a state court to grant postjudgment relief when military retirement pay previously divided by a divorce judgment is converted to disability pay, so long as the relief awarded does not itself attempt to divide disability pay as marital property. [4] Accordingly, if the court determines that Lorraine is entitled to enforcement relief or relief from judgment as a matter of state law, an ensuing order that results in David paying to Lorraine some or all of the amount she would have received directly from the United States Government absent David's conversion of his retirement pay to disability pay does not contravene Mansell. See, e.g., Krapf v. Krapf, 439 Mass. 97, 786 N.E.2d 318, 326 (2003) (The [postdivorce] judgment in this case does not divide the defendant's VA disability benefits in contravention of the Mansell decision; the judgment merely enforced the defendant's contractual obligation to his former wife, which he may satisfy from any of his resources.). [5]