BILL WOULD GIVE SPOUSES SAME RESIDENCY RIGHTS
Washington,
Jul 21 -
By: Rick Maze
Navy Times
A House committee has voted to expand legal and financial protections for service members and their families with legislation that would allow spouses to maintain a permanent home of record, just like their military sponsors.
The bill also would expand troops’ ability to cancel or suspend personal service contracts, including cable television, telephone and Internet contracts, when they get orders to deploy or move to a new duty station.
The provisions are included in HR 6225, approved by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee by voice vote July 16.
Under the bill, a spouse could maintain the same state of residence for as long as he is married to a service member, regardless of how many times the member moves on reassignment orders.
Service members have long been allowed to maintain the same state of residence for the duration of their military careers, which allows them to avoid such things as having to refile for a new driver’s license and reregister to vote when they move to a different state.
There are also tax implications; service members stationed at some point in their careers in a state that has no state income tax can claim and keep that state as their legal residence no matter how often they move.
That has major ramifications for military families, said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, who was the initial sponsor of the spouse residence bill.
Carter said being able to keep the same legal residence would simplify paying state and local income taxes and maintaining driver’s licenses, vehicle registration and other legal documents. Spouses could even continue voting in their hometown. He said it also would make a difference if a marriage ends in divorce, because it would not leave a couple facing the complicated issue of determining where to divorce in order to meet residency restrictions.
During a service member’s career, a spouse may “face multiple changes of voter registration and driver’s licenses, will pay income tax to a state they never intended to live in, and likely not have their name on any property titles — leading to a feeling that they are second-class citizens,” Carter said.
The bill could put more money into a family’s pocket because they can avoid paying higher tax on a spouse’s income, which often drops simply by virtue of the move when a spouse has to start over at a new job.
The committee plan says that a person absent from a state because his is accompanying someone on military orders may not lose his right to vote or register to vote if he leaves the state, regardless of whether he has any intention of returning.
Additionally, several activities often viewed as changing residences — such as buying a home — could not be used to determine that a military spouse has changed state residency.
Similar language is included for tax purposes. Buying a home does not make the spouse of a service member the resident of a state for tax purposes as long as the spouse is accompanying a service member on military orders.
Service members already have the right to cancel leases for housing and vehicles when deployed or ordered to change duty stations, but the committee has agreed to allow other contracts also to be canceled without penalty for those deployed 90 days or longer in support of a contingency operation, or assigned outside the service area covered by a contract.
The bill would make canceling a contract easy. Service members could deliver a cancellation notice, including a copy of the military orders, by hand, by private messenger service, by fax or by mail, as long as they use an envelope with sufficient postage and request a receipt that proves the message was received. Termination or suspension of service would take effect on the date the notice is delivered.
Failure to suspend or cancel a service member’s contract upon such request would be a misdemeanor, punishable by fines of up to $5,000 per person or $10,000 per company.
A service member also would have the right to sue for damages, with a court allowed to award up to three times the amount of damages plus attorney fees to the member.
