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How the 20/20/20 Rule Applies to Military Divorce
With the tremendous presence of the U.S. Navy, Annapolis counts on military families to support its economy. These are families that often face a lot more challenges than the typical civilian family. For example, they may wonder whether their spouses will return from work alive, see parenting duties fall on the shoulders of one spouse because the other may be on military missions or move regularly from base to base and country to country.
Such situations often add more strain to a marriage, potentially leading to separation and divorce. And this brings a whole new set of concerns. The main one is wondering what happens to the military benefits you relied on. You can maintain those benefits through a uniquely military decree known as the 20/20/20 rule.
Entitles Divorce Spouse to Certain Benefits
What is the 20/20/20 rule? It is a rule that provides certain military spouses with key protections such as continued entitlement to medical benefits along with shopping privileges at on-based exchanges and commissaries. In some situations, the former spouses also may qualify for military retirement benefits.
Delayed Injury Symptoms Can Surface After Any Accident
Whether it is a slip and fall that leads to you striking your head on concrete or a car accident resulting in whiplash or severe bruising to your torso, it is best to immediately seek medical attention. Even if you do not feel pain right away.
Take precautionary measures because you may never know just how badly hurt you really are. Even when people feel fine after their body sustained trauma, there may be something deeply wrong such as bleeding on the brain. Only a few hours after such an injury, the delayed symptoms surface, sometimes, tenfold. The potential results from a hidden injury: permanent disability and even death.
Hidden Injuries Surfacing Hours Later
Delayed symptoms may surface after any personal injury incident. Even a minor fender-bender car accident should get scrutiny. What if — hours after walking away from the accident – you have a terrible headache? This could the delayed symptom of a hidden injury.
Finding Hidden Assets from An Untrustworthy Spouse
During the years of your marriage, you and your spouse shared duties from raising the children and household chores to shopping, cooking and overseeing finances But something has changed in your relationship as togetherness becomes less and less. And those regular discussions have shrunk as well.
As a result, you have suspicions that your spouse is hiding more and more things from you. Secrets that may include other relationships along with assets. And who can blame you? Your marriage teeters dangerously on a precipice. But why is your spouse attempting to hide assets? The only answer is that he is hiding them so you cannot get them once you divorce.
Tax Returns Disclose so Much
As it turns out, your spouse is not the only one attempting to hide assets in a relationship. A poll conducted late last year by the OnePoll organization disclosed that 37% of the 2,000 respondents admitted to hiding money from their spouse or partner. Those who responded noted that they hid an average of more than $2,000.
Can You File a Personal Injury Claim After Causing an Accident?
Filing an insurance claim after an accident you did not cause is a relatively straightforward process in Maryland. Since the state follows fault-based insurance laws, you would – in this case – file your claim with the at-fault motorist’s insurer. But if you sustained injuries from an accident you caused, your options for filing an insurance claim may be more limited. There are ways, however, that you can recover compensation if you were at fault.
Your Options Depend on Your Coverage
Your ability to file an insurance claim after a collision you caused will depend on the types of coverage you have. Depending on your insurance policy, your claim will either go through your medical payments (Med Pay) coverage or personal injury protection (PIP) coverage. Keep in mind that both Med Pay and PIP coverage are optional in Maryland.
If your insurance policy only includes Med Pay coverage, your claim’s payout will only compensate your medical expenses. If you have PIP coverage, though, you may be able to recover compensation for other incurrences as well, including lost wages and expenses for childcare and household services. Neither Med Pay nor PIP coverage will provide compensation for pain and suffering you experience in the accident’s aftermath.
Joint Child Custody: How To Make Things Work
The majority of divorces in Maryland are somewhat peaceful. However, as civil as they may be, some issues will take time to agree upon. One of the most common of these issues is joint child custody. Also known as shared custody, this is when a judge orders that both parents have equal custody of a child. When this occurs, the two parties, along with their attorney, must come up with an agreement regarding scheduling and other items such as academics. There are a few points to remember that will help make the transition relatively painless.
Keep Your Personal Feelings to Yourself
Divorce can be a very messy situation, and tensions are certainly high. However, no matter how much you hate your ex-spouse, those emotions should never be showcased to either your ex or, most importantly, your children. They will still be involved in their lives, and adding stress to an already stressful situation is never good for anyone involved.
Treat It Like a Business
It may sound odd to treat your child’s custody as a business meeting, but that’s the best route to take to get what you need. Analysts comment on how many couples tend to go in with unrealistic and emotionally driven demands. This rarely works and usually only extends the custody talks.
ADAS May Be Reliable, but Concerns Remain
Advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS, are becoming the norm for newer vehicles, and the global market for this tech is expected to grow from $27 billion in 2020 to $83 billion by 2030. ADAS features cannot prevent all accidents, though. Perhaps you were in a crash in Maryland despite your use or the other driver’s use of ADAS.
The Positive Side of ADAS
Before getting into the drawbacks, though, let’s see where ADAS succeeds. Using features like forward and rear collision warning, pedestrian detection and cross-traffic alert, the system can alert drivers to an impending crash. Then, with automatic emergency braking, the vehicle can brake to avoid the crash if drivers are unresponsive.
ADAS usually comes with lane departure warning as well. This keeps drivers, who may otherwise be distracted or sleepy, in their lane. Another important feature is adaptive cruise control, which, besides minimizing fuel consumption, maintains a safe distance from other vehicles.
Reasons Why You Need a Prenuptial Agreement
Many Maryland couples hesitate to discuss a prenuptial agreement before they are married. Whether you feel uncomfortable discussing divorce before getting married or you do not want to talk about money, you may be doing yourself a disservice if you shy away from talking about this sensitive topic. There are many reasons why a prenuptial agreement is critical and should not be overlooked.
Some Benefits of A Prenuptial Agreement
The main benefit of a prenuptial agreement is that it will make for a more orderly and less contentious divorce if the marriage ends. Both spouses will have some certainty as to how the marital estate will be divided. This is even more important when you are coming into the marriage with money or you plan on starting a business during the marriage. Without a prenuptial agreement, the property is subject to division in a way that the court sees fit.
A Prenuptial Agreement as A Way to Begin a Relationship
You may be one of the many people who are afraid of talking about money with a prospective spouse because it could lead to fights. However, a prenuptial agreement is a good way to begin the conversation about money expectations during the marriage. This becomes even more vital if you have large amounts in a 401(k) or a family inheritance that you would be bringing into the marriage. Without this agreement, all of these assets could be at risk in the event of a divorce.
After a Military Divorce, What Happens to Retirement Pay?
While divorce rates in the U.S. are steadily declining, the number of couples who ultimately part ways remains significant. The American Psychological Association reports that roughly 40% to 50% of American marriages end in divorce.
Military couples who separate face unique issues when it comes to dividing assets, including retirement pay. Those facing divorce should know that, under the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act of 1981, a service member’s ex-partner may be eligible to receive a portion of a military pension as part of a divorce court’s division of marital property.
When Does a Divorcing Spouse Become Eligible for Retirement Benefits?
The courts follow the “10/10” rule when determining eligibility for a former spouse to receive retirement payments. According to this rule, the military member must have completed at least 10 years of service creditable to retirement, and the marriage must have lasted for at least 10 of those years.
Car Crashes, Trauma and Spinal Cord Injury
You may not necessarily think of spinal cord injury in connection with a car crash, but because of the sudden impact that occurs, this kind of injury makes sense.
However, there are two forms of spinal cord injury. Because symptoms vary, SCI is not always immediately apparent.
What Happens
The spinal cord is actually a cluster of nerves that deliver impulses from the brain to other parts of the body. It is vulnerable to injury and if damaged, cannot repair itself. Some sort of trauma, such as a blow to the spine that dislocates or fractures vertebrae, can damage the spinal cord. A car crash supplies the perfect sort of trauma to set SCI in motion.
A Look at Symptoms
There are two types of SCI: complete injury, in which the victim loses the ability to feel below the level of the injury, and incomplete, which means that some functioning remains. Symptoms vary, depending on the severity of the injury:
What Is First Right of Refusal in A Custody Agreement?
Raising good kids can be challenging for any parent. If you live in a post-divorce family, though, you likely face additional hurdles to overcome. Fortunately, co-parenting allows you to continue to see your kids according to the terms of your custody agreement.
Part of co-parenting involves deferring to your former partner’s parenting style. Still, as a divorced parent, you may have some anxiety about whom your ex-spouse chooses to have in his or her life. If you want to maintain some control, you may choose to include a first right of refusal provision in your custody agreement.
First Right of Refusal Clauses
Typically, parents have great latitude in deciding what to include in custody agreements and parenting plans. A first right of refusal clause simply requires each parent to offer the other the ability to care for the kids in his or her absence. Therefore, if your ex-spouse becomes unavailable to see the kids during a regularly scheduled visit, he or she must ask you to take them before hiring a babysitter or enlisting the help of a friend or family member.
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