In case you don't know the military term, "leave" means "vacation." But if you're military, you first have to get OFFICIAL leave from your duty station approved in writing by your chain of command. If they cannot afford to let you go on vacation (for ANY reason), you don't GO! Your spouse is uncontrolled by the military if she (he) is not in the military, and spouses can do whatever they want without being subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (or most Federal law unless they are on-base at the time of an offense.) It is a highly ironic twist of politics that any ex-spouse of a non-political military person would ever benefit by a seditious action which changed the direction of the law protecting U.S. uniformed military people by 180 degrees!
Before 1982, the US Supreme Court said it was un-Constitutional to divide military retired pay -- Federal military retired pay was not subject to the jurisdiction of STATE courts (of which civil divorce courts are the lowest level of competence as well as status). [See USSC case: McCarty v. McCarty, 1981.] In 1982, now-ex-Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-CO) sneaked a little bit of her own PORK legislation into the "must-pass" Defense budget at the last minute so that it became law without ever being discussed on the floor of the House or, even known about, by US Representatives who were voting. This changed the law suddenly in a most vicious manner &, for the first time ever, gave State divorce courts jurisdiction over military retired pay! To add more sneakiness to it, Schroeder had her porky, self-serving amendment "backdated" to take effect one day BEFORE the US Supreme Court decision in 1981 had officially encoded the proper ABSENCE of State Court jurisdiction over Federal military retired pay!
Pardon my digression from the original topic of this post -- which was a happy reunion time in Laredo! It is a relevant digression though -- if I had thought there would be anything like this Pat Schroeder anti-military law ever passed to destroy my incipient family without ANY grounds (from the latter-day lawyer invention of "no-fault divorce"), I would have sought a civil divorce instead of the Church wedding "legitimizing" our pre-Vietnam civil "shotgun wedding" elopement! [Refer to Post #1 of this entire Blog]. However, the Church wedding proceeded about 5 days after I arrived -- I'll post more on it next time. Although no Catholic priest ever found time to give us the required Church pre-Cana (premarital) counseling, not even the two from her home parish who married us. I wonder why not but I will never be able to ask -- both (even the young one) died just a few years after performing our Nuptial Mass.
posted by Richard A @ 9:40 AM
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