(0:00 – 0:42)
Hi everyone, welcome to Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell and I’m always privileged to be joining Bonnie Rabinovich-Mantel, who is the owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group. Bonnie, hi, how are you today? Hi Michael, I’m good.

How are you today? Good, good. Bonnie, Primus Family Law Group for many years has been particularly interested and has a great deal of care for our military families who live here in San Diego. Tell us a little bit about your connection to military families who are seeking divorce.

(0:43 – 1:37)
Well, several of our team members are either former military or they’re married to military. So we have a personal understanding of the differences that they face when they’re getting divorced and when they’re trying to deal with custody and visitation, because only the military get deployed. And so you’ve got those custody and visitation issues, how to share your children, sometimes continents apart.

And also with respect to retirement, they have unique things with their retirement that we have more expertise in how to handle. What do you hear is the one or two biggest concerns amongst military families who contact Primus Family Law Group? There’s a lot of preconceived notions. You see, part of the military members pay is not taxable.

(1:37 – 4:04)
So they feel that because they don’t have to declare it to the IRS, it’s not income to them when it comes to support, which is not true at all. All your income is income for support. Another thing that they find out is that when you’re retiring from the military, or if you’re disabled as a result, you can have part of your retirement divided into disability and then part of it in regular retirement.

And you can elect to take more of it as disability. And so they think that maybe that may help in the division, keep more of it for their own. And it doesn’t.

Your spouse is still entitled to what your spouse is entitled to. I would imagine that child custody becomes a primary concern amongst military personnel. It is because you can be here in town and be sharing your children on a 50-50 or close to 50-50 basis.

And then you’re at somewhere else. And obviously, you can’t see your children every day, every third day, because you live somewhere else. And it becomes difficult for everybody involved.

But the nice thing that we have in our law is that when the military member returns, that person’s previous timeshare resumes automatically. There’s no, well, I’ve been with mommy or I’ve been with dad for the last six months, and therefore I should stay. No, the children go back to their previous orders, which is nice.

The military member does not have to worry about having to literally get back what they had before. And if the military family is facing emotional distress, the kids are having emotional difficulties dealing with separation that goes beyond just deployment. But a family’s breaking up.

You work with mental health professionals on base, people who are specifically focused on military psychology, I assume. We don’t work with people directly on base, but we do work with a lot of professionals. We have many resources up our sleeve to help military members and their families deal with deployments and the children and, you know, having to deal with the anxiety and stress that all that brings.

(4:05 – 5:46)
This is an odd question, but I wonder, do the courts seem to have any more sensitivity for those uniformed personnel when they’re going through family court? Well, what do you mean by sensitivity? I mean, do you think? What were you going to say? Well, do the judges favor them because they’re military members? No, the law is the law is the law. But like I said, there are certain laws that are already put in place to protect the military member that are different than everybody else, because in regular non-military families, if a child spends all of a sudden so much more time with one parent, that parent can use it to say, OK, well, it’s now in the best interests of the child to remain with me more because this parent does not exercise visitation. But if the sole reason for not exercising visitation is deployment, that argument cannot be made.

So there are certain protections for the military member that are different than non-military members that the court does consider. And if a member of the military or a spouse wants to be in touch with Primus Family Law Group to learn more about how you can specifically help those in the military, how can they be in touch with you? You can reach out to us at 619-574-8000 or directly at our website, www.primusfamilylaw.com. And we offer a free 30 minute phone consultation to see how we can help you. I know that Primus Family Law Group does a great deal to support the military and we thank you for that.

(5:46 – 5:57)
Bonnie, we’ll see you next time on Family Law Matters. Thanks so much. Thanks, Michael.

And you have a great day. And thank you to all our military members.