Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [137]
Serving Divorce Papers on Your Spouse
The process of serving (delivering) papers to a spouse who is in military service can be more complicated than in a nonmilitary case. But service is the way that a court takes jurisdiction over the nonfiling party, and you need to get it done.
Serving Overseas Personnel
It may be difficult to get the paperwork to a spouse who is stationed overseas-especially if you've been separated for a while and you're not sure where your spouse is. If your divorce is uncontested and you just need to get the paperwork to your spouse, you can accomplish service by mail just as if you both were living Stateside. Chapter 3 explains how.
If you can't reach your overseas spouse or you find that mail service is likely to be refused, you may be able to seek help from a commanding officer or base commander. But in most cases you'll need a lawyer's help. Getting someone to serve papers personally on a military base in a foreign country is not a simple process-it's regulated by international treaty and varies from country to countryand you need the help of someone who's done it before.
Locating Your Spouse
It's possible for married people to lose track of each other, especially if they've been separated for a long time without getting around to formalizing their divorce. It's also possible that one spouse might deliberately try to elude the other. In either case, if you want a divorce, the missing spouse needs to be located or you need to get permission to proceed without the other spouse's participation.
If you're trying to find a civilian spouse, see Chapter 3 for information about how to look for your spouse and how to ask a court to excuse you from the personal service requirement if your search doesn't succeed.
If you're looking for a missing service member, you have a challenge ahead of you. Especially since September 11, it's difficult to find military personnel. If you know your spouse's Social Security number, you're one step ahead of the game. Even without that, a copy of your spouse's military identification card will be very helpful. Without either one, you're really going to have an uphill battle.
If you do have a Social Security number, you can try a number of ways to locate your missing spouse. First, if you're not sure whether your spouse is still in the military, you can find out using a new Web link. Go to https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/scra/owa/home. Once you know that, you can move on to finding your spouse.
Ways you can look for your spouse include:
Military locators. Each branch of the service has a Worldwide Military Locator Service. Not all of them are online yet. If you write or call, you'll need to explain who you are and why you are searching, and provide all the information you have about your missing spouse. An experienced attorney should be able to expedite your search.
Base commander. You can try contacting the base commander at the last known military base, to see whether the commanding officer has information about your spouse's new assignment.
Legal Assistance Office. The military has a group of lawyers called "legal assistance attorneys" (LAA) whose job is to help service members (and their families) with nonmilitary legal issues. An LAA might be able to help you find out your spouse's current whereabouts. You can get help from an LAA who is in a different branch of the military from your spouse. To find a legal assistance office, try the Legal Assistance Locator at http://assistance.law.af.mil.
Military Locators
Federal Parent Locator. If child support is involved, you might be able to make use of the Federal Parent Locator Service at www.ac£hhs .gov/programs/cse/newhire. There's more about this tool in Chapter 8, about child support enforcement.