U.S. Military (Ret.): Offer of early retirement up to the services - Military Retirement - Navy Times

U.S. Military (Ret.): Offer of early retirement up to the services

Q. I’ve been reading that some troops may be offered early retirement as part of the coming drawdown. Do you have any updates on that?

A. I’ve been getting a number of letters like this lately. I get the feeling a lot of people are waiting to make career plans based on this news.

Congress authorized early retirements last year, as well as other drawdown tools such as voluntary separation pay, as part of the 2012 Defense Authorization Act. But lawmakers left it up to the services to decide how to use that authority over the next few years.

The authority for early retirement allows the services to retire people with as few as 15 years of service. In most respects, it’s normal retirement — you would get all the usual retiree privileges, including lifetime health care and commissary and exchange privileges. Your retirement pay multiplier would simply be smaller than if you had served the traditional minimum of 20 years.

So far, the services have been slow to issue any details about how many people might be offered early retirement, and in what paygrades and/or years of service. In fact, it’s looking to me like we may not see any such offers until next year.

We know that a lot of people are eager for details. Rest assured that as soon as those details start trickling out, you’ll see them reported in this newspaper.

Q. I’m looking for some information on the 10/10/10 rule. Can you help?

A. The so-called 10/10/10 rule governs when the Defense Finance and Accounting Service directly pays former spouses their portion of a service member’s court-ordered retirement pay as part of a divorce settlement.

Direct payments from DFAS are allowed if the member served at least 10 years, the marriage lasted at least 10 years, and 10 years of the marriage overlapped with the member’s service on active duty. If that condition is not met, DFAS can’t make direct payments; the member is responsible for making the court-ordered payments to the former spouse.

The 10/10/10 rule does not determine whether a former spouse is entitled to a share of the member’s retired pay; that determination is made by the state court that presides over the divorce settlement.

The rule determines only who makes the payments — DFAS or the service member. You can find out more about the rule and other aspects of the Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act at www.dfas.mil/garnishment/usfspa/legal.html.