Your deployment orders arrived two weeks ago. You're headed overseas for nine months, and suddenly the "someday" conversation about wills and guardianship becomes urgent. If you're serving in the military or you're a veteran, your estate planning needs differ significantly from those of civilian families. Generic documents won't cut it.
Our East Texas Estate Planning Lawyers recognize that military families face challenges most civilians never encounter: frequent relocations, deployment cycles, federal benefit programs with specific designation rules, and the reality that both spouses might serve. Your estate plan needs to account for all of it.
Why Military Families Need Specialized Estate Planning
Military families operate under a dual system of laws that can create both opportunities and complications. Your estate plan must coordinate state laws in Texas or Arkansas with federal programs like TRICARE, Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI), Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), and military survivor benefits. Plus, each of these has its own rules about beneficiary designations and asset distribution.
The biggest mistake military families make is assuming their SGLI beneficiary designation covers everything. Federal benefit programs like SGLI and TSP operate outside probate and transfer according to the beneficiary forms on file with those programs, regardless of what your will says. TSP never defaults to your will or trust, even if those documents say otherwise.
Suppose Staff Sergeant Martinez updates his will to leave everything equally to his three children from his first marriage and his current wife. Three years later, he dies in a training accident. His $500,000 SGLI policy pays out, but it goes entirely to his ex-wife, because he never updated his beneficiary form after the divorce. His will is legally valid, but it can't override the SGLI designation.
Essential Documents for Deploying Service Members
When you're preparing for deployment, estate planning shifts from "important someday" to "essential right now." You need documents that allow someone you trust to handle financial matters, make medical decisions, and care for your children if something happens to you.
Financial Power of Attorney or Military Special Power of Attorney
A financial Power of Attorney allows your designated agent to manage bank accounts, pay bills, handle tax matters, and deal with military pay issues while you're deployed. The military often uses a Special Power of Attorney for deployment needs, which financial institutions sometimes prefer.
Medical Power of Attorney and Advance Medical Directives
Your appointed healthcare agent can make medical decisions if you're incapacitated. This becomes vital if you're injured and unable to communicate. Advance medical directives are federally recognized, though individual states and medical providers retain authority over how such directives are applied.
Guardianship Designation for Minor Children
If both you and your spouse serve in the military, or if you're a single parent, guardianship designation specifies who will care for your children if you cannot. Courts give substantial weight to these designations in Texas and Arkansas.
Family Care Plan
Required by the Department of Defense for single parents and dual-military couples with children, a family care plan designates short-term and long-term caregivers. While legally separate from estate planning documents, your family care plan should align with your guardianship designations.
DD Form 93 (Record of Emergency Data)
This critical form designates beneficiaries for death gratuity (currently set by Congress at $100,000) and unpaid pay and allowances. DD93 does not replace the SGLI form. If no valid SGLI beneficiary designation can be located, DD93 may be reviewed as part of determining likely intent, but it is not a formal substitute. Many service members overlook this form, but it controls significant benefits.
The Frequent Move Problem
Military families relocate far more often than civilian families. On average, they move every two to three years. Each move can affect the effectiveness of your Estate Planning documents because Wills, Powers of Attorney, and healthcare directives are governed by state law.
Generally, documents that were properly executed under the laws of the state where you signed them remain valid when you move. Texas and Arkansas both recognize Powers of Attorney validly executed in other states if they meet that state's legal requirements.
However, banks and financial institutions sometimes reject unfamiliar formats or request state-specific forms. When you establish residency in Texas or Arkansas, having an Estate Planning Attorney review and update your documents prevents problems with resistant institutions.
Understanding TRICARE and Survivor Benefits
Military healthcare and survivor benefits create planning opportunities that civilian families don't have, but only if you understand how they work and plan accordingly.
The Survivor Benefit Plan Decision
Picture this common scenario: Colonel Stevens retires after 24 years of service with a monthly pension of $4,200. He can elect full Survivor Benefit Plan coverage, which costs him 6.5% of his retired pay. If he dies before his wife, she'll receive 55% of his pension, about $2,310 monthly, for the rest of her life.
Surviving spouses of retired service members generally maintain TRICARE eligibility unless they remarry before age 55, at which point both SBP payments and TRICARE eligibility end. If the remarriage ends, the surviving spouse may regain eligibility. Spouses who remarry after age 55 typically retain both SBP and TRICARE. These remarriage rules apply primarily to survivors of retirees; active-duty survivor TRICARE categories have different rules.
If Colonel Stevens declines SBP coverage to keep his full pension, his wife receives nothing after his death except any assets that pass through his will or beneficiary designations. His $4,200 monthly pension stops completely. For most surviving spouses of retirees, TRICARE eligibility generally continues only if the spouse maintains retiree-dependent status, which typically requires SBP election. Survivors of active-duty deaths follow separate TRICARE rules.
SGLI and Thrift Savings Plan Beneficiary Pitfalls
Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI) provides up to $500,000 in term life insurance coverage for active duty service members. Your Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), which functions as the military's version of a 401(k), can accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars over a career. Both create estate planning problems when service members don't coordinate beneficiary designations with their overall estate plans.
Your SGLI beneficiary form (SGLV 8286) determines who receives your life insurance proceeds. Your TSP beneficiary designation controls your retirement account. If you named your mother as SGLI beneficiary when you enlisted at age 19, never married, and died at age 40 with three children, your mother gets the full $500,000, not your children.
TSP creates an additional complication. If you never filed a beneficiary designation, TSP follows a strict federal order of precedence. Your assets go first to your spouse, then to your children, then to your parents, then to your estate, regardless of your wishes. Many service members discover too late that their failure to complete a simple form means their TSP will bypass their intended beneficiaries entirely.
Smart estate planning for military families involves intentional beneficiary designations that work together with your will or trust. Name primary and contingent beneficiaries who align with your estate plan's objectives, then review these designations whenever your family situation changes.
Special Challenges for Blended Military Families
Divorce rates in some military branches and demographics have historically been similar or slightly higher than civilian averages, creating particular estate planning challenges for blended families. Service members often marry young, divorce, remarry, and accumulate complicated family structures.
Say, for instance, that Technical Sergeant Patterson married his second wife five years ago. Each has children from previous marriages. He updates his will to provide equally for all five children and his current wife, but he forgets three critical things:
- His SGLI designation still names his first wife.
- His TSP beneficiary form was never updated.
- His divorce decree awarded his ex-wife a portion of his military pension under the Uniformed Services Former Spouses' Protection Act (USFSPA).
When he dies, his first wife receives $500,000 from SGLI and continues receiving her court-ordered pension share. His current family receives far less than he intended because he didn't coordinate his beneficiary designations with his estate plan.
GI Bill Transfer Decisions and Estate Planning
The Post-9/11 GI Bill offers extraordinary education benefits, but transferring those benefits to your spouse or children creates both opportunities and obligations that affect your estate plan.
Service members can transfer unused GI Bill benefits to dependents, but doing so requires a four-year service commitment. You must complete the transfer while alive. Benefits already transferred can still be used by designated dependents after your death, but unused benefits cannot be transferred posthumously through your will or estate. They simply disappear.
If you're counting on GI Bill transfers as part of your children's college plan, you need to complete the transfer while you're alive and meet the service obligation. If you die before transferring, those benefits don't become part of your estate.
Special Needs Planning for Military Families
Military families face higher rates of disability, both in terms of service-related injuries and higher diagnosis rates of certain conditions in military children. When a family member with disabilities requires long-term support, Special Needs Trust Planning becomes vital.
Imagine Veteran James Thompson receives VA disability compensation and Medicaid benefits for his traumatic brain injury sustained during deployment overseas. His parents want to leave him an inheritance, but they worry that receiving assets directly would disqualify him from Medicaid, which pays for his residential care and medical treatments.
By establishing a Special Needs Trust for James, his parents can leave him substantial assets that supplement, rather than replace, his government benefits. The trust pays for quality-of-life expenses Medicaid doesn't cover: recreation, entertainment, travel, and specialized therapies. The inheritance never disqualifies him from Medicaid because he doesn't own the trust assets directly.
Ross & Shoalmire, P.L.L.C. works extensively with veterans and military families to coordinate Special Needs Trust Planning with VA Benefits, Medicaid Planning, and Asset Protection strategies that preserve benefit eligibility while maintaining quality of life.
Get the Military-Focused Planning You Deserve
Creating an estate plan that addresses military-specific issues requires attorneys who understand both state probate law and federal military benefits programs. They need to know how TRICARE works, how SGLI and TSP beneficiary designations interact with wills, how the Survivor Benefit Plan affects estate planning decisions, how divorce decrees under USFSPA continue affecting estates, and how frequent relocations impact document effectiveness.
The Estate Planning Attorneys at Ross & Shoalmire, P.L.L.C. help military families and veterans create plans that work for their unique circumstances. Whether you're facing deployment next month, retiring after 20 years of service, or you're a veteran dealing with service-connected disabilities, proper planning protects your family and honors your service.
