Military Divorce in Colorado
Colorado isn’t just a military-friendly state. It’s one of the most military-dense states in the country. Fort Carson, Peterson, Schriever, the Air Force Academy, Buckley—tens of thousands of active duty members, reservists, retirees, and their families live along the Front Range. In 2024, over 4,200 divorce cases were filed just in the jurisdiction covering El Paso County.
Military divorce isn’t a different kind of divorce. It’s the same Colorado divorce with a layer of federal law on top. And that federal layer changes things in ways that general-practice family lawyers sometimes miss.
Dividing Military Retired Pay
The Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act allows Colorado courts to treat military retired pay as marital property. It doesn’t require division—it permits it. The amount that’s divisible depends on the overlap between the marriage and the member’s creditable service. DFAS can make direct payments to the former spouse, but only if the marriage overlapped with at least ten years of service (the “10/10 rule” for direct pay purposes—though the former spouse’s share can still be awarded by the court even without meeting this threshold).
The Survivor Benefit Plan
SBP is the annuity that continues paying a surviving spouse or former spouse after the service member dies. It’s valuable—and it has hard deadlines. If the election for former-spouse coverage isn’t made within one year of the divorce decree, the coverage can be permanently lost. This is one of those details that falls through the cracks when your attorney doesn’t handle military cases regularly. It shouldn’t.
VA Disability: The Howell Problem
VA disability compensation is the service member’s separate property. Cannot be divided. Full stop. But here’s where it gets painful: when a retiree waives retired pay to receive VA disability (concurrent receipt), the former spouse’s share of retired pay can shrink—and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Howell decision says state courts can’t order the service member to make up the difference. This creates a gap that catches former spouses completely off guard if it isn’t addressed in the settlement.
Deployment and Custody
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act gives deployed members the right to stay court proceedings. Custody orders have to account for the reality of military life—deployments, PCS moves, temporary duty—while still prioritizing the child’s stability. Family care plans, powers of attorney for childcare during deployment, and flexible parenting time provisions all need to be part of the conversation.
Military divorce requires precision. At Burnham Law, we serve military families across the Front Range, including from our Colorado Springs office. We understand the federal overlay because we handle these cases regularly—not as a sidebar, but as a core part of what we do.