EXPERIENCED TAMPA MILITARY DIVORCE ATTORNEY PROTECTS YOUR RIGHTS

The military lifestyle is not for everyone. You can be stationed in faraway lands for months or years at a time, and just as you are settling in, you can be transferred at a moment’s notice. If you have a family, you might be able to see them on base, or you could spend long periods apart. Extended periods of time apart can wreak havoc on your marriage.

While divorce is not easy, military divorce can be even more difficult to navigate. Issues of child custody, spousal support and division of assets are all made more complicated by the long deployments involved in the military lifestyle and consideration of the benefits offered to service members. Working with an experienced Tampa military divorce attorney can help you understand how these issues affect your case, whether you are the service member or the spouse of a service member.

When one parent is serving active duty and is constantly being transferred to new places, it can make working out a child custody arrangement difficult. The courts will work to determine the best situation for the children, and that usually means placing them with the parent who can provide a stable home. If you are the non-military spouse seeking custody, this is good news for you. If you are the active-duty military spouse seeking custody, you will have to fight harder to get the outcome you want.

Tampa military divorce attorney Mark G. Rodriguez, of The Law Office of Mark G. Rodriguez, is experienced in negotiating partial child custody arrangements for active duty personnel who are regularly deployed in overseas locations. Our family law firm will fight to create a custody schedule that works around your tour orders and the location where you are expected to be positioned. We are knowledgeable in military divorce law and savvy navigating the system in order to work within the parameters of your service orders and create a workable child custody solution.

In a military divorce, one of the most important issues to be decided is how the military pension will be divided. If a couple has been married for at least 10 years, and the marriage overlapped with at least half the time spent in military service, the non-military spouse is automatically entitled to half the military pension. Depending on how long the military member has been in service, this pension could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it is paid out for the rest of the beneficiaries’ lives.

Though the non-military spouse is automatically entitled to half the pension, this distribution is not a foregone conclusion. Our South Tampa military divorce attorney works to negotiate the optimum settlement for every client.

If you are the service member, you might agree to relinquish another retirement account or even assets like real estate, in order to keep all of your military pension. If you are the spouse of the service member, you might agree to take less of the pension in exchange for other assets. Our Tampa military divorce lawyer provides the reliable guidance you need to determine the best course of action based on the specifics of your case and the value of the pension and other assets in question.

Spousal support can be a complicated matter in military divorces. Because of the constant moves required of active duty military personnel, the non-military spouse is often unable to maintain a job outside the home. Spousal support agreements should take into account the non-military spouse’s skills, education, future earning ability and expenses. For example, after the divorce, the non-military spouse will no longer be able to live on base, so will face increased housing expenses, in addition to a loss of family income.

Our Tampa military divorce lawyer helps you fight for the best spousal support agreement possible, ensuring that you and your family is taken care of.