Divorce Support Forums: Collecting Your Retirement and Spouse has retireme

Whatever portion of your retirement was earned during the marriage is community property. He may choose to be nice & let you keep it, but ... it sounds unfair, but if he earned teh whole military retirement before your marriage, married you while he was collecting his retirement & just sat around while you worked, considering his contribution to the marriage was his retirement... then he gets to keep his whole retirement pay in the future, and you get to give him half of whatever retirement benefits you earned while you were married to him. The hope is that if he had enough time before your marriage to earn retirement in one career, that if you're the same age, so did you, and even if you didn't collect, you still have all that you came into the marriage with (retirement entitlements, property & etc)... even though you're about to give up his income to your household...

I'm sorry if it sounds unfair, but if you were not married to him when he earned HIS retirement, you don't get part of it. If he was married to you when you earned YOURS. he does get part of it.

I've seen situations reported where that was evilly, horrifyingly wrong... like that the husband was collecting $6,000 a month, the wife was entitled to $6000 a month of her own, but he got to keep his entire $6000 a month plus half of hers & she was required to live on the other half of her own retirement entitlement. It leaves him with $9000 a month & her only $3000, and seems horrifying, but that's the way it worked. Thank goodness this is so rare that when it happens this unfairly, it's the stuff of legends... but for the one person it happens to, it's not comforting to find out that it's a rare situation.

I hope you find that most of your retirement entitlement was earned outside fo the marriage, or that part of his military pension should be sent to you. Good luck on this.