Can You and Your Spouse Join the Military Together
When one military member marries another, the couple becomes a "dual military" couple, also known equally mil-to-mil marriages or simply "dual armed forces marriages". Different branches of service may use other terms.
Dual military couples are common, and the number of same-service couples may exist larger than those who ally someone from a different co-operative of service. Army spouses, Air Force husbands and wives, Navy couples, Marine Corps families, and Coast Baby-sit couples know there are more pay and higher allowances offered to married couples.
Here are some ways dual-armed services couples tin benefit:
Dual War machine BAH Benefits For Married Troops
Consider the "with dependents rate" for BAH (the armed services housing allowance–a higher amount of housing money paid to the service member with ane or more than dependents. For this purpose, a spouse is considered a "dependent", technically speaking). The single service member does non get this elevated rate, only married couples (dual military or not).
When a mil-to-mil couple draws BAH, a table is required to make up one's mind the couple'southward BAH rates (per individual). Federal regulations governing BAH are found in the government publication Joint Travel Regulations, Chapters 8 through 10, which includes guidance on how a dual armed services BAH is paid to dual-military couples.
In mil-to-mil couples without dependent children, both spouses are paid without the dependents rate. If the couple has children, one spouse receives the with-dependent BAH charge per unit, the other gets the single-rate BAH.
Better Housing For Married Troops
The housing situation for Airmen, Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines can be much improved over life in the barracks; married couples are not subject area to the same kinds of living quarters inspections and communal living considerations that unmarried service members have to bargain with.
And the higher your rank, the better options you may take open to you depending on location and other factors.
Consider a typical armed forces consignment to a new base where at that place is enough of on-and off-mail service housing to cull from. An enlisted service fellow member in the ranks of E1 through E3 (and in some cases E4s with less than four years of service or some like standard) is not permitted to live in the local community. These troops are ordinarily required to live in the barracks.
Married couples in the same rank/time-in-service situations are not subject to these requirements unless they are sent to an unaccompanied consignment where the family will not live.
Married troops (dual military machine or not) have choices that include privatized, on-base housing, as well equally housing in the local community. Dual military couples don't get any additional consideration in this area, but equally it stands the housing situation is greatly improved for the married couple.
Information technology should be pointed out hither that the "improve housing for couples" is not an intentional effort or policy by Defence Department leaders to offer married service members a better lifestyle, but in many areas, married couples do reap the benefit of their state of affairs and the military's willingness to provide higher allowances, better housing, etc.
A "Hidden" Mil-To-Mil Couples Do good
Bold both halves of a dual-military spouse situation have put in the required time-in-service requirements to qualify to apply for a VA abode loan, a dual military couple has some unique alternatives that a single service member does not have quite the same access to. What does this hateful?
VA loans require you to have total VA loan entitlement for the loan. Generally, if y'all take never used your VA loan benefits earlier, you have 100% of your entitlement remaining once you lot take your VA Certificate of Eligibility.
Dual military couples take a option to brand when it comes time to apply for a VA mortgage. They tin both employ their entitlement for the loan, and the borrower's financial commitment to the loan is matched by the amount of entitlement. If ii members employ and both use their VA loan entitlement, they are both charged half of that entitlement.
Merely a dual military couple has the selection to use only i person's VA loan entitlement, which means the other spouse has the ability to apply for another VA mortgage later on (assuming the borrower is financially qualified to do then).
The pick of 2 VA dwelling loans is a definite advantage.
Nutrient Allowances: Basic Allowance For Subsistence
Depending on where you are assigned, the cost of living in the surface area, and other factors, you lot and your dual military spouse may authorize to depict an allowance known as BAS, the Basic Allowance for Subsistence. BAS is intended to assistance meal costs for service members. Both halves of the mil-to-mil couple can describe this allowance, effectively doubling it.
Bring together-Spouse Or Joint Spouse Assignments
Military members often get reassigned to a new military base, installation, or fifty-fifty a deployment without the option to bring families along (i.east., military duty in parts of Republic of korea are "no dependents" tours, and all deployment situations are strictly "no dependents".)
When a dual military couple faces the next round of PCS orders, they have the selection to utilise for a Join Spouse or Articulation Spouse (the preferred term of the Air Force) assignment so that both can be given PCS orders to the new gaining base.
This is non e'er possible, and some reassignments involving mil-to-mil couples have them assigned to different bases roughly within a 100-mile radius or less. There are instances of mil-to-mil couples who have been deployed to war zones together or those who air current upwardly in the same country at the same time but have to commute to exist together.
Armed forces couples must go along in mind that they are subject to the needs and whims of the military assignment organization and it is best to have a detailed conversation with your detailer, Senior Principal, Primary of Personnel, or any other position that may have a directly effect on where you are assigned next as a couple or as an individual.
Ask the advice of your current assignments person to learn how to utilise for joint assignments, merely too talk to your unit orderly room to talk over how to claim the higher rates or added allowances if yous are soon to be married, or recently married and in demand of an update to your military records.
When You Cannot Be Assigned Together As A Mil-To-Mil Couple
Plenty of military blogs discuss the benefits of the Join Spouse consignment option, just non everyone gets to have reward. The mission comes showtime and the needs of the military may non include letting a mil-to-mil couple be reassigned to the same base.
In such cases, there is a Family Separation Allowance you may qualify for every bit a married service member (even if you are not a dual military couple). Yet, there are specific rules for claiming this allowance as a dual military couple:
- Yous must be sent away from your family unit for more than 30 days due to receiving military orders.
- The couple must be living together as a couple before the duty begins.
- Only one person in the dual military couple tin receive the allowance.
- A dual military family that receives orders for each spouse is paid only one time, to the highest-ranking service member of the couple.
Child Care Issues For Mil-To-Mil Couples
The military does not accept a specific policy that offers childcare benefits to married couples.
All families are required past their branch of service to provide documentation outlining a childcare program for contingencies such equally deployments, TDY, etc.
Ane of the biggest advantages of beingness a military parent is the power to use on-base childcare options such equally Child Development Centers, Family Kid Intendance offered in regulated individual on-base homes, etc.
Childcare expenses are huge challenges for families, and CDC costs are based on rank among other factors. Lower-ranking (and lower-paid) enlisted service members won't acquit the aforementioned financial burden their more experienced and higher-ranking co-workers volition.
In this area, the dual military machine couple has a distinct advantage. DoD school centers may prioritize dual-armed forces family enrollment. In that location may exist other resources DoD might offer every bit well. Check with your Family Readiness Group or Work Life Program for data to back up you and your children's transition.
Double Retirement Pay For Dual Armed services Couples
This does NOT refer to a special program offering to double military retirement pay for mil-to-mil couples; at the time of this writing, such a program does not exist.
Yet, assuming both military members choose to remain in uniform until retirement-eligible, information technology's easy to run across that when both spouses depict military retirement pay, that effectively doubles the amount assuming the time-in-service, fourth dimension-in-class, and other variables friction match up.
Mil-to-mil couples who do not retire at the same rank and time-in-service (among other variables) may non depict the verbal same amount of retirement pay.
Other Factors Yous Should Know most Dual Military Married Couples
The benefits of being a dual military couple can include being assigned together, drawing higher allowances (the "with-dependents" rate), getting better housing options, and improve retirement pay numbers (assuming both spouses retire from armed services service).
But being a dual war machine couple has downsides, too–it'due south of import to anticipate these as much as it is to know your benefits and making sure you take everything yous are entitled to.
Some war machine-related blogs have encouraged dual-war machine couples to do things like apply for reassignment to the highest-cost-of-living areas possible to maximize BAH payments and other benefits.
Joe Wallace is a 13-year veteran of the Usa Air Force and a former reporter for Air Strength Television News.
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Source: https://militarybenefits.info/dual-military-couples/
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