I often hear misconceptions about military divorce issues.  For some reason
people believe that they have to be married to the military member for 10 years
before they can get a share of the military retirement.  This is not true.  A
spouse only has to be married 10 years to get DFAS (the Department of Finance
and Accounting Service) to send their share of the retirement directly to the
spouse.  In cases in Louisiana the military retirement is divided according to
the Sims’ formula.  The Sims’ formula provides that the court should divide the
retirement as follows: take the number of years married while the retirement was
accruing and divided that by the number of years of military service and then
divide that number by one half.  So for a nine year marriage with 20 years of
service the percentage would be: 9/20 *.5=22.5%.