The Military Divorce Handbook: A Practical Guide to Representing Military Personnel and Their Families

Now completely revised and significantly expanded, The Military Divorce Handbook continues to be the go-to resource for understanding the issues involved and effectively representing military personnel and their spouses in domestic situations--divorce, separation, custody, support, and division of property. This timely and much-needed addition to a family lawyer’s library is both comprehensive and practical, covering all aspects of representing servicemembers and their spouses in divorce in an accessible, easy-to-use format.

When a divorce action involves a military client, there are special issues that arise which make these cases more difficult. The Military Divorce Handbook guides you through the complexities of all aspects of representing military personnel or their spouses to help you provide competent and thorough representation for your client. Key chapters explain the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), military tax issues, and the important issue of dividing military retirement benefits. Also covered are the difficult and increasingly important issues of custody and domestic violence involving servicemembers.

Explaining complex issues in clear, current and concise language, Mark E. Sullivan provides numerous Practice Tips throughout the text to make your practice easier and more efficient. Relevant appendices are included at the end of the chapter, and in this two-volume edition, hundreds of additional pages of additional material are available to readers online. This fully updated edition includes extensive new information, including:

• An expanded section about rules and resources for getting documents from the government under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act
• A new glossary of cases on the SRCA, a chart showing the new statutory sections for the Act since its codification by Congress in 2015, and new information on how to search the Defense Department’s on-line database for whether a party is serving in the military
• A section-by-section analysis of the Uniform Deployed Parents Custody and Visitation Act and an expanded section on international kidnaping remedies and the Hague Abduction Convention
• Resources on domestic abuse and the Family Advocacy Program, a section on Article 128b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that makes domestic violence a new criminal offence, and information on representation for sexual assault victims and compensation for domestic-abuse victims
• New sections on the Blended Retirement System and the Supreme Court’s Howell decision and VA indemnification, new rules about the amendment to the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act which freezes the divisible pension on the date of divorce (the Frozen Benefit Rule), esources for understanding military retired pay, and an expanded section on reduction in grade at retirement due to misconduct

Now in its third edition, The Military Divorce Handbook continues to be a pertinent resource and a helpful legal guide for attorneys handling family law cases in the military context. The hands-on knowledge contained in this accessible handbook is essential for family lawyers so they can provide professional representation for their client, whether servicemember or spouse.

Mark E. Sullivan is the principal of Law Offices of Mark E. Sullivan, P.A., in Raleigh, North Carolina. Certified as a family law specialist by the North Carolina Board of Legal Specialization since 1989, he retired in 2002 from the Army Reserve as a colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps with 34 years of commissioned service, and he was awarded the Legion of Merit as ＂the Army’s foremost authority in family law.＂ He has taught military family law at the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School (Army), where he is an honorary lifetime faculty and staff member, and at the Naval Justice School.