Military families face unique challenges that can strain even the strongest marriages. Frequent deployments, extended separations, relocations across the country or world, and the stress of military service all contribute to patterns that differ from civilian divorce rates. For military families stationed in Missouri or with connections to the state, understanding these patterns and the special legal considerations involved helps service members and their spouses navigate this difficult process.
Higher Divorce Rates Among Military Personnel
Research consistently shows that military service members face elevated divorce risks compared to civilian populations. According to data analysis, first-line enlisted military supervisors have divorce rates approximately thirty percent higher than average by age thirty. Military occupations hold three of the top ten spots for professions with the highest divorce rates, indicating that military life creates particular pressures on marriages.
Several factors contribute to these elevated rates. Long deployments separate couples for months or years at a time, placing enormous strain on relationships. Studies published in the Journal of Population Economics found clear links between time spent apart and increased divorce rates. The simple reality of prolonged absence makes maintaining emotional connections difficult.
Financial stress also plays a significant role. Junior enlisted service members often receive relatively modest pay while managing families and household expenses. Moving frequently prevents spouses from establishing stable careers, reducing household income and creating additional financial pressure. When combined with the challenges of single parenting during deployments, these economic factors strain marriages considerably.
The Impact of Deployment on Marriage Stability
Deployment represents one of the most significant stressors military couples face. Beyond the obvious challenges of separation, deployment creates concerns about safety and survival that most civilian families never experience. Service members deployed to combat zones face genuine threats to their lives, creating anxiety and stress for both the deployed person and the spouse remaining at home.
The spouse left behind essentially becomes a single parent overnight. Managing children, household responsibilities, financial matters, and emergencies alone for months requires tremendous strength and adaptability. Even in the best circumstances, this arrangement creates loneliness and feelings of isolation. When complications arise, medical emergencies, vehicle breakdowns, or school problems, the absent service member cannot provide hands-on help, leaving the home-front spouse to handle everything independently.
Upon return from deployment, couples face new challenges adjusting to living together again. The service member may have changed through their experiences, developing coping mechanisms or perspectives difficult for their spouse to understand. The spouse who managed everything alone may have established routines and systems that the returning service member disrupts. Both partners need time and patience to reintegrate, but this adjustment period creates additional stress that some marriages cannot withstand.
Mental Health Challenges
Combat deployments and military service expose personnel to traumatic experiences that can lead to lasting mental health effects. Reports indicate that one in five veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan has struggled with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or both. These mental health challenges don't just affect the service member; they impact the entire family.
PTSD can manifest in ways that strain marriages, including difficulty controlling anger or irritability, emotional numbness or detachment, hypervigilance that makes relaxation difficult, and avoidance of situations that trigger distressing memories. Spouses may feel like they're living with someone they no longer recognize, unable to connect emotionally with their partner.
Depression similarly affects relationships by reducing energy and motivation, creating persistent sadness or hopelessness, causing loss of interest in activities previously enjoyed, and making it difficult to fulfill family responsibilities. When one partner struggles with depression, the other often becomes caregiver, supporter, and sole provider of family stability, exhausting roles that can lead to burnout and resentment.
While mental health treatment is available through military and veteran healthcare systems, accessing care and finding effective treatments takes time. Some service members resist seeking help due to stigma or concerns about career impacts. This delay in treatment means families struggle longer with symptoms, increasing the likelihood that marriages will not survive.
Frequent Relocations and Career Disruption
Military families move frequently as service members receive new orders. The average military family relocates every two to three years, far more often than civilian families. Each move requires finding new housing, establishing new support networks, enrolling children in new schools, and adapting to different communities.
For the non-military spouse, frequent moves severely disrupt career development. Building professional networks, gaining experience, and advancing in careers requires stability that military life doesn't provide. Many military spouses find themselves in entry-level positions repeatedly or working jobs below their qualifications because employers hesitate to invest in training someone who will likely move within a few years.
This career disruption has both financial and psychological impacts. The lost income strains family budgets and creates dependency on the military member's income. The inability to pursue professional goals leads to frustration and reduced self-esteem for capable, educated spouses who want meaningful careers but cannot achieve them given their circumstances.
Children also suffer from frequent relocations. Constantly changing schools and leaving friends creates social and academic challenges. Parents must help children adapt repeatedly while managing their own adjustment difficulties. The stress of supporting children through moves while handling their own struggles adds another layer of pressure to military marriages.
Young Marriage and Divorce Risk
Military culture encourages early marriage for practical and financial reasons. Service members receive additional benefits and allowances when married, making marriage financially attractive. Young recruits separated from family and friends for the first time often seek emotional connection and stability through romantic relationships. The intensity of military life can accelerate relationship timelines, leading to marriages that might have developed more slowly in civilian contexts.
However, marrying young increases divorce risk regardless of whether someone serves in the military. People in their late teens and early twenties are still developing emotionally and establishing their identities. What seems like compatibility at nineteen may not reflect true long-term compatibility once both partners mature. Adding military stresses to already vulnerable young marriages creates particularly high divorce risks.
The combination of young age at marriage and military lifestyle explains why divorce rates among military personnel spike during the first few years of service. Couples who marry quickly find themselves facing deployment separations, financial stress, and frequent moves before they've built strong foundations for their relationships.
Special Legal Considerations in Missouri
Missouri law provides the framework for military divorces, though federal statutes add important protections and requirements. Understanding both state and federal law helps military families prepare for what dissolution entails.
Missouri requires that one spouse has been a Missouri resident or stationed in the state for at least ninety days before filing for divorce. Military service members can establish residency based on their duty station, but they also maintain legal residence in their home of record. This means multiple jurisdictions might have authority to handle military divorces, requiring careful consideration of which location serves the family's interests best.
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act provides important protections for active-duty personnel. This federal law allows service members to request stays of court proceedings if military duties prevent them from participating meaningfully in their divorce cases. Courts must grant these stays unless they find that military service doesn't materially affect the service member's ability to appear.
The SCRA also establishes specific requirements for service of process on active-duty service members. Courts must verify military status before entering default judgments against defendants who haven't responded to divorce petitions. These protections ensure that service members' legal rights aren't violated due to their military obligations.
Division of Military Retirement Benefits
The Uniformed Services Former Spouses' Protection Act allows state courts to treat military retirement pay as marital property subject to division. Missouri courts apply equitable distribution principles to military pensions just as they do to other marital property.
The "ten-ten rule" affects how retirement benefits are paid after divorce. If the marriage lasted at least ten years and those ten years overlapped with at least ten years of military service, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service will make direct payments of the former spouse's share of retirement benefits. This rule doesn't determine whether or how much retirement pay gets divided; it only addresses the payment mechanism.
Marriages shorter than ten years that overlapped with military service can still result in the division of retirement benefits. However, the service member must make payments directly to the former spouse rather than have DFAS handle the distribution. This distinction matters because direct payments from DFAS provide more security and consistency than relying on the former spouse to make payments.
The Survivor Benefit Plan allows former spouses to receive benefits if a retired service member dies. However, the divorce decree must specifically designate the former spouse as the SBP beneficiary. Without this designation, former spouses lose access to survivor benefits even if they're entitled to a portion of retirement pay.
Military Allowances and Support Calculations
Missouri courts consider military allowances as income when calculating child support and spousal support obligations. The Basic Allowance for Housing and Basic Allowance for Subsistence are included in income calculations, not just base pay. This ensures that support obligations reflect the service member's true economic resources.
Child support follows Missouri's guideline calculations using Form 14, which factors in both parents' incomes, number of children, childcare costs, and health insurance expenses. Military parents must provide documentation of all pay and allowances to ensure accurate support calculations.
Spousal support considers factors including the length of marriage, standard of living during marriage, economic circumstances of both spouses, and earning capacities. Military spouses who sacrificed careers due to relocations or took on single-parenting duties during deployments may need maintenance to achieve financial stability post-divorce.
Custody and Parenting Plans for Military Families
Child custody arrangements for military families must accommodate the realities of military service, including potential deployments, training exercises, and relocations. Missouri law requires that parenting plans address how deployment or temporary duty assignments will affect custody and visitation.
Courts cannot deny custody to service members solely because they may deploy. However, service members must designate caregivers who will care for children during absences. These family care plans ensure children have appropriate supervision even when the military parent cannot be present.
Parenting plans should specify how custody will temporarily modify during deployment, what notice the deploying parent must provide, how the non-military parent's time with children will expand during deployment, and procedures for returning to the normal schedule when deployment ends. This flexibility protects both parents' relationships with their children while ensuring stability despite military obligations.
Healthcare Benefits After Divorce
TRICARE eligibility for former spouses depends on the length of marriage and overlap with military service. The "twenty-twenty-twenty rule" states that former spouses retain full TRICARE coverage if the marriage lasted at least twenty years, the service member served at least twenty years creditable for retirement, and those twenty years completely overlapped.
The "twenty-twenty-fifteen rule" provides transitional TRICARE coverage for one year after divorce if the marriage lasted at least twenty years with fifteen years of overlap. This temporary coverage allows former spouses time to secure alternative health insurance.
Former spouses who don't meet these thresholds lose TRICARE eligibility upon divorce finalization. Planning for healthcare coverage becomes essential for non-military spouses who don't qualify for continued benefits.
Housing Considerations
Military families often live in government-provided housing on military installations. Upon divorce, non-military spouses must vacate military housing. This requirement means divorced spouses need to secure alternative housing quickly, adding another layer of stress and disruption to already difficult circumstances.
The timing of housing transitions should be addressed in divorce settlements to ensure reasonable periods for finding new residences. Courts cannot order the military to extend housing privileges beyond what regulations allow, but they can establish timelines that give non-military spouses adequate notice and time to relocate.
Resources for Military Families
Military families going through divorce have access to special resources and support services. Military legal assistance offices provide free legal consultations and may help with simple divorce matters. While these offices cannot represent service members in contested cases, they offer valuable information and document preparation assistance.
The Military and Family Life Counseling Program provides confidential, non-medical counseling to help military families manage stress and cope with challenges including divorce. These services are free and available to active-duty, guard, and reserve members and their families.
Financial counseling through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and military family support centers helps families understand their finances and plan for post-divorce economic realities. These services can be particularly valuable when dividing military benefits and establishing separate households.
Missouri Child Support Services assists with establishing, modifying, and enforcing child support orders. Military families can access these services regardless of whether the service member remains on active duty or has separated from service.
Moving Forward
Divorce presents challenges for any family, but military families face additional complications from federal laws, military regulations, and the unique stressors of military life. Understanding the patterns that lead to higher divorce rates among military personnel helps families recognize warning signs and seek help early.
The deployments, relocations, financial pressures, mental health challenges, and early marriages that characterize military life create perfect storms for relationship problems. However, awareness of these risk factors allows couples to address issues proactively through counseling, better communication, and utilization of support resources.
For military families in Missouri facing divorce, understanding both state and federal laws helps protect rights and interests. Working with attorneys experienced in military divorces ensures that retirement benefits, healthcare coverage, custody arrangements, and other military-specific issues are properly addressed.