Estimating Military Retired Pay

INTRODUCTION: SILENT PARTNER is a lawyer-to-lawyer resource for military legal assistance attorneys and civilian lawyers, published by the Military Committee of the American Bar Association's Family Law Section and the Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel of the North Carolina State Bar. Please send any comments, corrections and suggestions regarding this pamphlet to the address at the end of this Silent Partner.

Introduction

From time to time, lawyers who do military divorce work will get inquiries regarding how to estimate a military pension or the monthly amount of the military retired pay of a member of the uniformed services. This latter term means the “armed forces,” that is, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, and also the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service (PHS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The rules for calculating the retired pay of the active-duty “member” one of these service components, technically called “Regular Retirement” pay, are set out in 10 U.S.C. § 1407 and 1409 for the armed services, and at equivalent sections of the U.S. Code for PHS and NOAA officers. Below is a simplified explanation of the rules for calculation.

“What’s the Formula?”

The basic formula for determining one’s retired pay is Retired Pay Base times Retired Pay Multiplier, or RPB X RPM. This can be illustrated as:

Retired Pay Base x Retired Pay Multiplier

To be more specific let’s fill in some details to these general terms, especially focusing on the 2.5% part of the Retired Pay Multiplier shown below[1] -

High-3 Pay x Years of Service x 2.5%

High-3 Pay

“High-3 Pay” is the average of the highest three years (not necessarily continuous) of base pay for a member, expressed on a monthly basis.

• How to obtain the documents and do the calculations is set out in the Silent Partner infoletter, “Military Pension Division and the Frozen Benefit Rule: Nuts ‘n’ Bolts,” found at www.nclamp.gov > Publications.
• The quick way to estimate this is to take the current pay of the member, obtained from his or her Leave and Earnings Statement, or “LES” (or other equivalent pay statement, such as the “PaySlip” for Coast Guard member), and multiply it times 98%. Thus if Major Jane Doe receives $8,000 per month as her base pay, the estimate for her High-3 Pay would be $8,000 X .98% or $7,840.

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) is the pay center for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. The Department of Defense regulation governing the Privacy Program, DoD 5400.11-R, states that the Defense Department will release the following information regarding a servicemember: date of rank, gross salary, length of military service and Basic Pay Entry Date. Para. C4.2.2.5.2.1, DoD 5400.11-R (May 14, 2007). Other items may also be disclosed.

Years of Service

“Years of service” can be determined by asking Major Jane Doe, if she is your client. Otherwise the figure can be determined by review of her LES (look at the “Pay Date” or “Pay Entry Base Date” as well as the DIEMS, or Date Initially Entered Military Service). The LES may be provided voluntarily by Jane or her attorney, or it may be obtained otherwise through discovery. This information is also available through a request pursuant to DoD 5400.11-R, as noted above. If you know Jane’s pay grade[2] and years of service, you can determine her present base pay by using the pay tables at the DFAS website, https://www.dfas.mil > Military Members.

Example of the Calculation

Let’s follow up on the calculations for Major Jane Doe, with the data set out above. Her “estimate” for the High-3 is $7,840, and her Retired Pay Multiplier (assuming that she has just finished serving 20 years) is 20 X 2.5%, or 50%. The combination of these gives $3,920/mo. This is the projected retired pay for Major Doe if she were to retire at the 20-year mark with the above as her High-3 pay.

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[rev. 1/29/2020]

SILENT PARTNER is prepared by Mark E. Sullivan, a retired Army Reserve JAG colonel and the author of The Military Divorce Handbook (Am. Bar Assn., 3^rd Ed. 2019). For comments or corrections, contact him at mark.sullivan@ncfamilylaw.com or 919-832-8507.