You might be the one deployed
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Who This Is Written For
Nearly every military divorce page you will find is written for the spouse at home. That is half the picture. A good share of the people calling this office are the ones on orders, trying to get something resolved from a berth with a satellite connection and one scheduled call a week.
One of them was a sailor deployed on a carrier. She could take a call at exactly one time, and nothing else. Her husband was living on base in Millington with their children. The paperwork had to be emailed to her, filled out around a watch rotation, and sent back. That is not an unusual file. That is the typical one.
Most of that is now handled without a phone call at all. The intake form gets filled out whenever the shift ends, from wherever the ship is. The retainer is paid on the payment page. The contract comes by email. By the time there is a call, the attorney already has the file.
The Question Everybody Asks First
In an uncontested case, you do not.
Tennessee law lets the other spouse sign a notarized marital dissolution agreement in lieu of service of process. Signing it counts as a general appearance before the court and as an answer to the complaint. No process server has to board anything. No ship has to be located. The statute is T.C.A. § 36-4-103(a)(2), and it is the single most useful thing a deployed servicemember can know about getting divorced in this state.
That provision carries two conditions, and both of them change the order you do things in.
The agreement has to make specific reference to a pending divorce by court and docket number. The case gets filed first, and the agreement gets drafted after there is a docket number to put on it. Anyone trying to get the paperwork signed before a deployment, before anything is filed, is signing a document that does not do the job.
And the agreement is valid for one hundred eighty days from the date the last party signs it. In an ordinary divorce both people sign in the same week and nobody thinks about it. In a military divorce the signatures can be a month apart with an ocean in between, and that window becomes the thing the whole case is scheduled around.
Sequence
The case gets filed. The agreement gets drafted with the docket number on it. The deployed spouse prints it, signs it in front of a notary, and mails the original back. Ships have notaries. So does every legal assistance office on every installation.
From there the original goes to the other spouse to sign in front of a notary as well. In an uncontested divorce the two of them are usually cooperating, so mailing it straight across is simpler than routing everything through the office twice.
The one hundred eighty days starts running on the second signature, not the first. Then the waiting period has to clear: the case must be on file sixty days before it can be heard, or ninety days if there is a minor child. So the hearing lands somewhere between day ninety and the end of that window.
That is a range, not a deadline, and it is comfortable as long as somebody is watching it. Nobody is going to tell a sailor at sea that a document she signed in March stops working in September.
The Hearing
Final divorce hearings in Shelby County get done by video and on affidavit regularly. Whether that is available in your case depends on the division the case lands in, and there are thirteen of them.
That answer comes after filing, not before, because until the case is assigned nobody knows which set of preferences applies. It is the first thing worth asking about once the case has a number.
Flat Fee Pricing
The same as any other uncontested divorce. Nobody is charged extra for being in the service.
A military pension counts as property, the same as any other retirement asset. Which row a case lands in depends on what has to be divided and whether there are children.
| Situation | Fee |
|---|---|
| No property, no children | $700 |
| Investment or retirement accounts, no children | $900 |
| Real property, no children | $900 |
| With children, regardless of property | $1,000 |
| Spouse missing or cannot be served | $2,500 |
| Situation | Fee |
|---|---|
| No minor children | $370 |
| With minor children | $450 |
Most cases start for $500 down, with payment plans available on the balance. Full pricing and the rest of the process is on the uncontested divorce page.
Support and Alimony
A civilian paycheck is mostly a salary. A military one is base pay plus a stack of allowances and special pays that move with rank, duty station, dependents and deployment. Run a child support worksheet off base pay alone and the answer comes out wrong.
Tennessee's guidelines address this directly. Rule 1240-02-04-.04(3)(a)(4) treats Basic Allowance for Housing, Basic Allowance for Subsistence and Variable Housing Allowance as income for child support purposes. They count whether or not they show up as taxable pay.
Which is why the worksheet starts with a Leave and Earnings Statement rather than a pay stub. The LES has the whole picture on it. Bring a recent one and the number can be run properly the first time.
Once income and property are established, support and alimony are the straightforward part of a military case. Getting the income right is the work. You can see roughly where a case lands with the Tennessee child support calculator, which is built from the state's own worksheet.
Retirement
Federal law, the Uniformed Services Former Spouses Protection Act, lets a state court treat disposable retired pay as marital property. So a military pension is divided the way other retirement accounts are divided, with the portion earned during the marriage on the table.
The same federal law is where continued medical coverage for a former spouse comes from, and whether it is available turns on how long the marriage and the service overlapped.
The division language goes into the agreement here. The order that actually splits the pension is referred out to a service that prepares them, the same as a civilian retirement account.
When There Is No Agreement
Everything above assumes the other spouse signs. When they will not, the notarized agreement no longer substitutes for service, and the case becomes a lawsuit.
Service and discovery are the two places these get stuck. Serving somebody who is on orders, moving between duty stations, or living on an installation is harder than serving a neighbor, and this office has run into problems with it. It has always gotten accomplished. It takes longer and it costs more, and it is the first thing worth talking through.
There is also a federal protection worth knowing about. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act lets an active duty spouse ask the court to pause a case while service obligations keep them from appearing. It has not come up in these files, but it exists, and a client should hear about it from their own attorney rather than from the other side.
A contested divorce starts at a $6,000 retainer and is billed hourly, with service of process carried as its own cost. More on how those run is on the contested divorce page.
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Jurisdiction
If you or your spouse has lived in Tennessee for six months before the complaint is filed, the case can be filed here and Tennessee law governs it. That covers most families attached to Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, which puts a Navy installation inside the county.
It is a common arrangement. One spouse stays with the house and the children in Millington while the other is on orders somewhere else. The residency is satisfied by the one who stayed.
Tennessee also has a provision written for military families specifically. Under T.C.A. § 36-4-104(b), anyone in the armed services, or the spouse of someone in the armed services, who has been living in this state for at least a year is presumed to be a Tennessee resident. That presumption can only be overcome by clear and convincing evidence of a domicile somewhere else.
So a home of record in another state does not by itself keep a case out of Tennessee. A year at Mid-South carries a presumption with real weight behind it.
Other states have their own residency rules and their own law on pensions and support, and where a case is filed changes how it comes out. If there is a choice between two states, that is a conversation worth having before anything gets filed in either one.
A spouse who genuinely cannot be located is a different situation with its own process and its own fee. Courts here are cautious about it in a military case, reasonably so, since a servicemember who cannot be found is rare. More on that is on the missing spouse divorce page.
Your Attorney
Sam Jaber · Divorce & Family Law
Attorney Sam Jaber has practiced divorce and family law in Memphis for over a decade and finalized more than 100 divorces in 2025. Military cases are one or two a month out of that volume, most of them from Millington, and they are the ones where the order of the steps matters most.
The consultation is free and it is the fastest way to find out whether your case is the straightforward kind. The intake can be filled out from anywhere, which helps when a call has to be scheduled around a duty rotation.
Uncontested divorce → · Contested divorce → · Child support → · About Sam Jaber →
Common Questions
In an uncontested case you do not have to. Tennessee law lets the other spouse sign a notarized marital dissolution agreement in lieu of service of process. Signing it counts as a general appearance and an answer, so no process server ever has to find the ship. That is T.C.A. 36-4-103(a)(2), and it is the single most useful thing a deployed servicemember can know about getting divorced in Tennessee.
Most of it, yes. The intake, the payment, the contract and the drafting all happen remotely. Two things cannot. Both spouses sign an original agreement in front of a notary, and there is a final hearing. Many divisions in Shelby County will take that hearing by video or on affidavit. Which option is available depends on the division the case lands in, and there are thirteen possibilities, so that question gets answered once the case is filed.
One hundred eighty days from the date the last party signs. That clock matters more in a military case than any other, because the signatures are usually weeks apart and separated by mail and a deployment. The final hearing has to happen inside that window, and the case also has to have been on file sixty days, or ninety days if there is a minor child.
No. An uncontested military divorce is priced off the same flat fee table as any other uncontested divorce. A military pension counts as property, the same as any other retirement asset, and which row a case falls in depends on what has to be divided and whether there are children. Nobody is charged more for being in the service. A contested case is different, and complicated service of process can add cost there.
Yes. The Tennessee Child Support Guidelines name them. Rule 1240-02-04-.04(3)(a)(4) treats Basic Allowance for Housing, Basic Allowance for Subsistence and Variable Housing Allowance as income for child support purposes. Base pay alone produces the wrong number, which is why the worksheet starts with a Leave and Earnings Statement rather than a pay stub.
It can be. Federal law, the Uniformed Services Former Spouses Protection Act, lets a state court treat disposable retired pay as marital property. In Tennessee that means the portion earned during the marriage is on the table like any other retirement account. The firm drafts the language into the agreement and refers the order itself out to a service that prepares them.
If you or your spouse has lived in Tennessee for six months before filing, the case can be filed here, and Tennessee law applies to it. There is also a provision for military families: a year of living in this state creates a presumption of residency for a servicemember or their spouse. That is common for families attached to Millington, where one spouse stays with the house and the children while the other is on orders. Other states have their own rules, and where a case gets filed changes the outcome, so it is worth a call before anything is filed anywhere.
Then it is a contested divorce and the agreement no longer substitutes for service. Service and discovery are the two places these cases get stuck. Problems come up and they get solved. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act also lets an active duty spouse ask the court to pause the case while they are unable to appear. A contested divorce starts at a six thousand dollar retainer and is billed hourly, with service of process as its own cost.
Mostly Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, which puts a Navy installation inside Shelby County. The firm handles one or two military divorces a month. About half the time the client is the servicemember rather than the spouse at home, which is the opposite of how most firms write about this.
Free consultation. Start the intake from wherever you are and Sam Jaber will have it before the call.