In a case dealing with several military issues, the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed awards to the wife of 18 months of a husband’s GI Bill benefits, non-modifiable alimony, and the entire marital share of his military retirement.
The order on the GI Bill was reversed because the benefits legally were not transferable. 38 U.S.C. § 3319 only allows such transfers during active duty, and only to a “spouse, children, or both”. After the divorce, the wife was no longer the spouse, the Court reasons.
The husband, who served in the Marine Corps from 1998 until 2011, seems to have been behaving badly and erratically. The Court upheld imputing his former income to him because he lost his job with a defense contractor for several months of poor work performance, including not showing up for work and not communicating. In 2015 he told his wife he was having an affair with his ex-wife and was leaving the marriage, and then felt suicidal and checked himself into a hospital. A year later, he was in court for a protective order hearing the day before the divorce trial, but then did not show up for the trial. His lawyer could not contact him, a continuance was denied, and so he did not get to present evidence. He later said he was being medicated for PTSD and depression, and took too much of his medication that morning, and the next day he was hospitalized in a mental ward for eight days. The trial court did not believe him. His appeal of the denials of his motion to continue, and his motion to be allowed to present evidence later, failed for the usual reasons: procedural defaults, trial judge’s discretion, and failure to cite specific resulting rulings that harmed his interests (though those were obvious and the rest of the appeal was about them). However, the Court of Appeals ended up remanding all the economic issues for a full rehearing because of the flatly illegal rulings on alimony, retirement and the G.I. Bill, so effectively it did give him his day in court.
Garrett v. Garrett, Va. Ct. App. Unpublished 4/18/17