Welcome to the JO Forum’s series on dual-military Families! Here, we’ll introduce you to who is a dual-military couple, how to navigate the bureaucracy, and provide you resources to learn more about the limits and loopholes of this Army category. At the end of this series, we’ll all … dual-mil or not … be more empowered to manage our careers, Families, and teach others to do the same. Let’s get started!

What is “dual-military”? The term dual-military refers to a married couple where both spouses are currently serving in any of the United States Armed Forces.  While we won’t be able to deep dive into every single aspect of these combinations (as there are dozens), we will touch base on many of them to broaden your understanding. Primarily though, we’ll be talking about dual-Army couples.

Who is this series for? Everyone! Whether you’re part of a dual-military couple or not, this series is intended to provide an understanding of the processes (and sometimes obstacle courses) that this family model has to go through to take care of their business.  We’re going to cover topics that all family models have to navigate (and, yes, Single is a family model) so all are welcome into this conversation.

Now that we’ve defined what we’re talking about, let’s get down to business. What exactly are we going to talk about?

Here’s an outline of the posts to whet your appetite:

Post 0: Introduction: What is dual-military? <<< (You’re reading this post right now!)

Covers outline and resources referenced in follow-on posts.

Post 1: Congrats, Newlyweds! Time to sign some (more) paperwork.

Covers various bureaucratic necessities following your legal marriage, including DEERS, RAPIDS, MACP, Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH), and some recommended and optional ones, too (name change, and transfer of G.I. Bill (including aspects of the Forever GI Bill)).  

Post 2:  Join the Army, See the World, Part 1: Deployment

Covers deployment, for one or both spouses, with and without dependents,  how finances change, utilizing the FRG, Family Care Plans, Family Separation Allowance (FSA)

Post 3: Kids really do change everything, including Army life

Covers an overview of planning when to have a child (adoption or biologically-linked), what pregnancy means for a Soldier, considering child care options, how finances change (Family Separation Allowance, Basic Allowance for Housing), and requirements of a Family Care Plan.

Post 4:  Join the Army, See the World, Part 2: PCS

Covers the execution of a Permanent Change of Station, for one or both spouses, with and without dependents. Includes info on Personally Procured Moves, too.

Post 5: Next verse (not quite) same as the first: Dual-Military, revisited.

Covers discussion from fellow officers sharing their lessons learned over their careers across sister services, rank structures, and within the same branch.

What these posts won’t cover: Look, there is a TON of information out there about human resources, finances (personal and military), and their convergence. There are people who spend an entire military career followed by an entire civilian career helping Soldiers execute personnel actions, deployments, and PCS, and those people still face wicked problems and unique circumstances. We won’t be covering all possible combinations of dual-military families or every single potential financial Entitlement or Allowance (check out the DoDFMR for the difference of those two). The intent of this series is to educate and empower you, and to provide you the foundation in order to research other topics that apply to you, your Family, and your career.

I’m new to this – where else can I engage in this community? There are many blogs and websites that serve as supportive Family communities within the larger military community outside of our professional discussions here.  A few include MilitaryOneSource and NextGen MilSpouse, and they frequently post articles about both dual-career and dual-military Families to help you make sense of challenges as (or before) you encounter them.

Remember, the forum norm is that conversations that take place here in the forum can only be shared outside this space with the contributor’s permission. So if you want to share any of this series outside the forum, please contact me and let me know.

 

So now let’s dive in! Are you getting preparing to get married (or maybe commission and marry in the same month)? Are you dual-military? What do you want to see addressed in this series? Let us know below!