One spouse serves, and the case grows a second rule book. The divorce still runs on Texas law. But the SCRA can pause the clock, the USFSPA controls the retirement, and deployment has its own subchapter of the Family Code.
A military divorce is a Texas divorce: grounds, community property, conservatorship, and child support all run through the Texas Family Code. Federal law adds the overlays: the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act can pause the case during active duty, the USFSPA (10 U.S.C. § 1408) governs division of military retired pay, and Tex. Fam. Code §§ 153.701 through 153.709 govern possession when a parent deploys.
A divorce may be maintained in Texas only if one spouse has been a Texas domiciliary for the preceding six months and a resident of the filing county for the preceding 90 days. For military families, the next sections do the real work.
Time a Texas domiciliary spends outside the state or county in service of the armed forces, or accompanying a serving spouse, counts as residence in Texas and in that county. Deployment does not forfeit the courthouse.
A servicemember stationed at a Texas installation for the last six months, and in one county for the last 90 days, is treated as a Texas domiciliary and county resident for filing: no prior Texas ties required. The accompanying spouse gets the same treatment.
Deployment that moves a conservator a substantial distance supports temporary possession and support orders without the usual proof of a material and substantial change. The orders end when the servicemember returns.
While a primary conservator is deployed, the court can appoint a designated person to step in: the other parent first, then a person the deploying parent chooses, then a person the court chooses, each measured against the child's best interest.
Within 90 days after deployment concludes, the returning parent may petition for additional periods of possession to compensate for the time deployment cost. The schedule the family had before comes back into force.
A Texas divorce with the federal overlays live: SCRA timing, military pay in the support picture, retirement division under the USFSPA, and orders drafted so the military pay system can act on them.
We handle this when one spouse, or both, serves on active duty, in the Guard, or in the Reserve. See divorce.
Temporary orders under Subchapter L when a parent deploys: designated persons to exercise possession, expedited hearings, electronic testimony, and make-up time when the parent returns.
We handle this when a deployment, mobilization, or PCS is about to change a child's calendar. See child custody.
The community share of military retired pay under the USFSPA: the disposable-pay definition, the frozen-benefit rule, the 10/10 direct-payment mechanics, and decree language DFAS will honor.
We handle this when retired pay is on the table, often the largest asset in the case. See property division.
Guideline child support computed from net resources when the paying parent's compensation arrives as base pay plus allowances and special pays on an LES.
We handle this when the support number depends on reading military compensation correctly. See child support.
Residency and jurisdiction when the military owns the address: a Texan stationed away, a servicemember newly stationed in Texas, or a spouse filing here while the member is elsewhere.
We handle this when where to file is the first contested question, and it often is.
Changing an existing order when military life has moved on from it, with § 156.105's limit in view: deployment alone is not grounds to permanently rewrite possession.
We handle this when the order no longer fits the family it was written for. See modifications.
Domicile, home of record, duty station, and the child's home state get a first-pass read before anything is filed. In a military case, where to file is a strategy decision, not a formality.
The case opens with a petition or an answer, and the SCRA question is answered early: whether a stay will be sought, and how the timeline plans around active-duty realities either way.
Possession, support, and decision rights for the months the case is pending, built around training cycles and deployment windows, with expedited hearings and remote testimony where § 153.707 provides for them.
The LES, retirement points and pay statements, TSP, and survivor-benefit picture are gathered and characterized. Discovery where needed, then mediation. Most cases resolve there.
A decree the military pay system can act on: retirement division in the language DFAS honors, survivor-benefit elections with their deadlines mapped, and a possession schedule that anticipates the next set of orders.
There is no separate “military divorce” filed in a separate court. When one spouse serves (active duty, Guard, or Reserve), the case is a Texas divorce: the same grounds, the same community-property framework, the same conservatorship and support standards every other North Texas family works through.
There is no separate “military divorce” filed in a separate court.
What changes is the overlay. Federal law reaches into the case at specific, nameable points: the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act controls timing when active service interferes with the case, and the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act controls how military retired pay is divided and paid. The Texas Family Code itself carries a subchapter written for deployed parents that most civilian cases never open. Knowing which rule book governs which question is most of what makes these cases different, and most of what this page maps.
Texas opens its courthouse doors on residency. Under Texas Family Code § 6.301, a divorce may be maintained here only if one spouse has been a Texas domiciliary for the preceding six months and a resident of the filing county for the preceding 90 days. For a family that moves on military orders every few years, that rule alone would be a wall. So the code answers it, three times.
A Texan stationed overseas for three years can still file in the county they left.
First, leaving does not mean leaving. Under § 6.303, time a Texas domiciliary spends outside the state, or outside their home county, in service of the armed forces counts as residence in Texas and in that county, and the same is true for a spouse accompanying the servicemember. A Texan stationed overseas for three years can still file in the county they left.
Second, arriving can be enough. Under § 6.304, a servicemember with no prior Texas ties who has been stationed at a Texas installation for the last six months, and in one county for the last 90 days, is treated as a Texas domiciliary and county resident for the purpose of filing. The accompanying spouse gets the same treatment.
Third, the couple needs only one anchor. Under § 6.302, if one spouse has been a Texas domiciliary for the last six months, the other spouse, domiciled anywhere in the world, may file in the Texas county where the domiciliary spouse resides.
Two cautions belong next to those rules. Domicile is not a duty station: as a general matter, a military posting does not by itself change the state you legally call home, because domicile turns on physical presence plus intent to remain, which is why home of record, tax elections, and voter registration end up as evidence in a divorce case. And if children are involved, custody jurisdiction runs on its own track: under the UCCJEA (Tex. Fam. Code Chapter 152, § 152.201), the child’s home state generally controls the conservatorship side, and it is entirely possible for the divorce to belong in Texas while the custody questions belong somewhere else. Sorting that out before filing is far cheaper than discovering it after.
For a family that moves on military orders every few years, that rule alone would be a wall.
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is the federal statute most military spouses have heard of and fewest have read. Its stay provision, 50 U.S.C. § 3932, applies to civil cases (divorce and custody included) where a party is in military service and has notice of the case. On the servicemember’s application, the court must stay the proceedings for at least 90 days. The application has two required parts: a letter explaining how current duty materially affects the servicemember’s ability to appear and stating when they will be available, and a letter from the commanding officer confirming that duty prevents appearance and that leave is not authorized. Additional stays can be requested on the same showing; those are discretionary, and if the court refuses one, it must appoint counsel to represent the absent servicemember.
A companion provision, 50 U.S.C. § 3931, guards the other door. A default judgment cannot be quietly entered against a servicemember who never appeared: the court must first require an affidavit about the defendant’s military status, must appoint an attorney if the defendant is serving, and a default that slips through can be reopened after service ends.
The SCRA is a pause, not an immunity. The case resumes. The marriage does not un-file itself, and the estate keeps accumulating characterization questions while everyone waits. For the serving spouse, the stay is breathing room, the chance to litigate with both hands free rather than from a deployment. For the spouse at home, it is a scheduling reality to plan around: temporary support and possession arrangements become more important, not less, when the main case may sit still for a season. Either way, the stay rewards the side that saw it coming and planned the timeline honestly.
For a career servicemember, retired pay is often the largest asset in the case, larger than the house. It is also the asset with the most folklore attached to it.
The Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act, 10 U.S.C. § 1408, is a permission statute: it lets state courts treat a member’s disposable retired pay as property divisible under state law. Texas law then does what Texas law does. Retired pay earned during the marriage is community property, and the community share is divided within the same just-and-right framework as the rest of the marital estate. Retired pay earned before the marriage is separate.
Two definitions inside the federal statute carry practical weight. “Disposable” retired pay is gross retired pay minus specific items, including amounts waived to receive VA disability compensation. Because division reaches only disposable pay, a post-divorce disability waiver can shrink the pool a former spouse’s share is computed from; that is exactly the kind of contingency a well-drafted decree addresses rather than discovers. And for a member who divorces before retiring, the frozen-benefit rule fixes the divisible amount by the member’s retired-pay base and years of service at the date of the decree, plus cost-of-living adjustments, not the higher rank and longer service the member may eventually retire on.
The 10/10 rule decides who sends the check. It does not decide whether the retirement is divided.
The most repeated misconception in this corner of family law is that a marriage must last ten years before military retirement can be divided at all. That is not what the statute says. The 10/10 rule, 10 U.S.C. § 1408(d)(2), governs payment mechanics: DFAS, the government pay agency, will pay a former spouse’s property-division share directly out of retired pay only if the marriage lasted ten years or more overlapping ten years of creditable service. Fall short of 10/10 and a Texas court can still divide the retirement; the share simply moves between the former spouses rather than arriving from DFAS. Marriage length affects how large the community share is. It does not gate whether one exists.
Two benefit questions ride alongside the pension and deserve their own lines in the decree. Retired pay stops at the member’s death; the Survivor Benefit Plan is the annuity that can continue income to a former spouse, and whether that protection survives the divorce is a decree-and-deadline matter: the elections carry unforgiving time limits, and silence is itself a decision. Health care is narrower still: a former spouse keeps TRICARE eligibility only in the 20/20/20 situation federal law defines at 10 U.S.C. § 1072(2)(F). Twenty years of marriage, twenty years of creditable service, and twenty years of overlap between them, with further conditions, including remaining unremarried. Outside that window, coverage after divorce is transitional at best, and the cost of replacing it belongs in the settlement math, not in the fine print.
Custody in a military family is decided the way Texas decides every custody case: conservatorship and possession, measured against the best interest of the child under Texas Family Code § 153.002. Military service is not a strike against a parent. And the code goes out of its way to prove it, with a subchapter written specifically for families who serve.
Military service is not a strike against a parent. And the code goes out of its way to prove it, with a subchapter written specifically for families who serve.
Subchapter L of Chapter 153, §§ 153.701 through 153.709, answers the question deployed parents actually ask: what happens to my time with my child?
When deployment, mobilization, or temporary military duty moves a conservator a substantial distance, § 153.702 lets either parent seek temporary orders on possession and support without proving the usual material and substantial change in circumstances: the deployment itself is enough. The orders are genuinely temporary: they terminate when the servicemember returns to their usual residence, and the original order comes back into force.
While the parent is away, the court can appoint a designated person to exercise their time with the child. If the deploying parent holds the exclusive right to designate the child’s primary residence, § 153.703 sets an order of preference: the other parent first, then a person the deploying parent chooses, then a person the court chooses, each tested against the child’s best interest. If the deploying parent is the one with a possession schedule, § 153.705 lets that time be exercised by someone they choose (a grandparent, a stepparent), so the child’s connection to that side of the family does not go dark for a year.
A parent does not lose the schedule for going where the orders said.
The procedure bends to the uniform as well: § 153.707 requires an expedited hearing when a conservator’s duties materially affect their ability to appear, and lets testimony come in by electronic means. When the deployment ends, § 153.709 gives the returning parent 90 days to petition for make-up time, additional periods of possession to compensate for what the deployment cost. And § 156.105 closes the loop from the other direction: deployment, by itself, is not a material and substantial change that supports permanently modifying the order. A parent does not lose the schedule for going where the orders said.
Texas guideline child support is calculated from net resources, and the definition in Texas Family Code § 154.062 is deliberately broad: all wage and salary income and other compensation for personal services, plus, in the statute’s words, all other income actually being received. In a military case, that makes the Leave and Earnings Statement, not the base-pay line, the honest starting point: allowances and special pays appear on the LES, and how they are treated in the calculation deserves attention rather than assumption. We will not do the math on a marketing page (every family’s numbers are their own), but the cost estimator shows how the framework fits together, and the consultation puts real numbers to it.
Plainly: this is family law for military families. The case we handle is the Texas case (divorce, conservatorship, possession, support, property division) with the federal overlays read correctly and drafted into orders that hold. If your matter is primarily a federal-benefits dispute rather than a Texas family-law case, we will say so and point you toward a better-suited resource.
Every matter here starts the same way: a free, fifteen-minute Case Alignment Review with our intake team, a fit-and-jurisdiction conversation, not a sales call. For a military family, that call has an extra job: residency, domicile, and the child’s home state get a first-pass read before anyone spends money, because in these cases where to file is a strategy decision, not a formality. If we are not the right firm for the shape of your case, we will say so on the call.
When the fit is right, the next step is the $275 Strategy Consultation: a working session where an attorney puts the duty schedule, the LES, the retirement picture, and the possession realities on the table, evaluates your case, and walks you through your rights and options, under attorney-client privilege. From there the case follows the sequence above: filing or responding with the SCRA posture set, temporary orders shaped around the duty schedule, the financial record built, and final orders written so the decree and DFAS agree.
The county matters here as much as in any Texas case. Each of the twelve counties we file in runs its own standing orders and docket rhythms, and part of the work is knowing which procedural path fits where your case sits. What the process looks like week to week, start to finish, is mapped on what to expect, and how retainers work is explained, in plain terms, here.
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We handle military divorce matters across the 12 North Texas counties. We know each docket.
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We file in Collin, Dallas, Denton, Tarrant, Rockwall, Kaufman, Ellis, Hunt, Grayson, Fannin, Wise, and Parker counties. We know each docket.
Every family-law case sits in front of a court whose standing orders, hearing rhythms, and docket preferences vary by county. Which court hears a temporary-orders motion the same week. Which one orders mediation before any contested hearing. That is the local part of practice that does not show up in the statute book.
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Family law is a long relationship.
The wrong fit costs everyone.
Most cases here start with a fifteen-minute alignment review. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so on the call.
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