Kelsey, these are GREAT questions and really dive deep into the heart of this dual-military struggle. Thanks for contributing them! I’ll be sure to incorporate your questions into my main posts to go through some more scenarios, but here’s the information to address your questions sooner rather than later.

For PCS: I almost always cc my spouse on an email I send to my Branch Manager at HRC. That’s so my spouse is tracking my conversation and so my branch manager can easily find his name and his branch manager with minimal work. When I add his branch manager to communication is usually after some coordination on a PCS. When I received my assignment slate pre-CCC and was getting ready to send it back to my branch manager, I cc’d both my spouse and his branch manager with a note to the effect of “I’ve cc’d the MI Branch manager, CPT X, for their situational awareness of our upcoming PCS”. For another example, I just got a note from HRC specifically asking me if my spouse was PCSing with me or not. You betcha I responded to that email with a Reply All plus his branch manager that just said “this is the way ahead…based on these conversations…for this COA”. If I am doing a follow-up email to my branch manager for communication maintenance purposes, there’s generally not a need to cc the other branch. I will, however, recommend having a tagline to include about yourself when doing these comms checks with branch to make your correspondence more memorable, and for me thats “I’m the dual-military AG officer (at Fort Drum) (married to a Cyber officer) (about to finish my first year of KD)”.

For school (I assume you mean PME, such as BOLC or CCC): Unless both spouses of the couple are in the same branch, you’re not attending BOLC together, since the intent is a foundational knowledge in your discipline of the Army. That means parents and kids will probably have to be split, or maybe sent to live with family / close friends for those 6 months; these are deeply personal family choices that can only be made and acted upon by the parents. For CCC, there is some flexibility in attending courses that are not explicitly your core branch. I know a handful of MI officers who attended the Manuever CCC, as well as an Engineer who attended the Aviation CCC. I don’t know alot about how to do that off the top of my head, except that it was coordinated via HRC (just as your branch CCC would be as well, originating for most people as a 4187 through your chain of command). Some branches accept a different school and some don’t. I would be shocked, for example, if AG accepted anything but AGCCC since there’s alot of branch transfers and you really wouldn’t be prepared to do KD going to any other CCC.