Dual-Military intro/post review:https://juniorofficer.army.mil/discussion/what-is-dual-military-intro-to-the-series/
Resources post: https://juniorofficer.army.mil/discussion/what-is-dual-military-resources/

Deciding to get married is a significant life decision. While you may have told (and maybe celebrated with) your family and friends about your recent exchange of rings, now’s the time to tell the Army and HRC, too. This post is going to cover enrolling into MACP, updating your status as ‘married’ with the Finance office and DEERS, considering transferring your GI Bill to your dependents (spouse, children, or otherwise), and considerations of changing your name. Let’s get started!

The first thing that a dual-military couple needs to address is enrolling in MACP. This request is usually done on a DA 4187, but processes may vary within Commands and potentially more with the future implementation of IPPS-A. Your S1 channels will process this and the core databases will be updated to reflect that you are MACP. This status will reflect on your ORB in the Comments section when complete. This is also a great time to contact your respective Branch Managers to tell them you just got married, your MACP request is processing, and they should be seeing your ORBs update soon. Remember also to have realistic expectations of this conversation. In the words of Ron, an MI guy with 20+ years of experience and over 15 years of dual-military marriage: “MACP is an enrollment, not a guarantee of any sort. Don’t expect it to be.”

While you’re waiting for your MACP to process, make your way over to your local DEERS office (also referred to as CAC Office, usually located in your Brigade S1) to take care of your dual-enrollment as a dual-military couple. “What’s dual-enrollment?,” you say? “I just did my request for MACP! I have to do this again?” The short answer is, yes, you do have to do it again. But, we’re here on this Forum to learn and it is a great question and an important distinction. The short answer is that MACP helps you PCS together as a couple (just as Ron said above) by adding a note in your personnel file at HRC (not as guarantee though, remember that), and DEERS sets you up for access and transfer of benefits among dependents. We’ll talk more about that transfer of benefits in a bit, but for now, the takeaway is that you will eventually need to do both, and it’s really just easiest to take care of them all at the beginning.

Going to DEERS to execute your dual-enrollment is simplest to do when you go with your spouse, but can technically be done in separate locations/times. I personally can vouch for the helpfulness of your spouse being your battle buddy to keep you in check, but your living / working situation may not allow this immediately after your marriage. Let’s cover the in-person process first, then the geographically separated second. Head to the DEERS office and tell them you’re dual-military and need to do a “dual-enrollment”, meaning you’re both adding each other as a spouse to the other’s DEERS record. Sound confusing, right? Well…It is. (Just a refresher, go back to the Resources post and read the DoDFMR definition of spouse and then come right back. Okay, that fresh in mind, read on! Oh, and keep the Resources open.) Most Army databases and policies were written assuming that only one person of the couple was in the military. This is a great reminder as to why you knowing your limits and authorizations is so important. Not to worry though, this is a routine action (I can personally attest that dual-military is a subset of required training to operate a RAPIDS station) and this update can be done very smoothly as long as you have all the documents to prove your identity and your spouse’s, plus your marriage certificate. (While you’ve got the Resources post open, check out the list of authorized documents on the DEERS website. There’s also attachments at the bottom of this post). All your documents will be scanned into DEERS via RAPIDS, your spouse will be linked to your account in DEERS, and then vice versa. That’s it! You’ll know you’re good to go when you log into MilConnect and see your spouse by-name listed in your profile as well as you in their profile. We’ll come back to what else you can see and change in MilConnect shortly. But first, the promised process for a long-distance DEERS transaction.

In order to tackle dual-enrollment because one of you is deployed, you didn’t PCS together, or a short-notice TDY, both spouses need to get a Special Power of Attorney for purpose of DEERS enrollment (the Garrison JAG office should already be tracking how to execute this). The purpose of this Special POA is to provide the spouse’s consent who got the POA for the spouse who is physically going to DEERS to access that person’s account. If my spouse and I have to get enrolled in DEERS but I’m jetting off for a deployment and there’s not time, then I go to JAG and get a Special POA for him to take to DEERS. When he goes to DEERS, he still tells them he’s dual-military and needs to be dual-enrolled. Because I am not physically there to state my consent with the DEERS technician opening my record and adding him to my record, the Special POA acts as my consent. If we still needed the other side of the transaction done, too, then my husband would also go to get a Special POA that I would take to DEERS to act as his consent for me being added to his record. Since the required documents usually involve a CAC, Driver’s License, and/or passport (things you normally need to function — legally — in the military), you may need to execute this course of action if you both cannot go to DEERS together.

For those still wondering why there have to be two separate transactions to do a dual-enrollment, it goes back to what I said about a family model of one spouse in the military. When a non-dual-military couple goes to DEERS to have their family officially added as dependents, what’s happening is that the Soldier (the Sponsor) is telling the Army (via DEERS/RAPIDS) that they have given this specific person (their spouse) access to their account, as well as the benefits they specifically are earning as the Soldier/Sponsor (benefits like access to TRICARE or the Commissary, that’s part of the reason and use for the Dependent ID card). For a dual-military couple, this has to happen twice because once is for one Soldier’s account as the Sponsor adding the other as the role of Spouse, and once is for the other Soldier’s account as the Sponsor. This is why I suggest it’s easier to go as a couple to become “dual-enrolled” in DEERS, but also why it’s possible to do at different DEERS stations at different times.

Now that we’ve talked about telling HRC that you’re married and telling Army-wide systems you’re married, let’s talk about something else really important… DD93, SGLI, and FSGLI. I am here to tell you that that is literally nothing more important that you could do immediately after your marriage than update these documents. Sure, Army Regulation lists “spouse” as the primary next of kin, but do you really want to risk a scenario where the Army doesn’t realize you’re married and only notifies your parents? On top of updating each other’s DD93 and SGLI, take the time to sign up for Family SGLI (FSGLI). As of January 2013 (a painful policy change for me, as it was merely two weeks prior to my own marriage), dual-military couples have to actively enroll their spouse (who, by now, you’ve listed in DEERS!) to receive this insurance. Non-dual-military couples do not need to take action to enroll their spouse, but can change or stop coverage of FSGLI at any time, just like with SGLI, if they choose. As a reminder these transactions are all done in … you guessed it! … MilConnect.

After doing through all that, there’s still another office you need to inform of your marriage – your Garrison Finance Office. Surprisingly, there is very little paperwork required of you for financial adjustments after your marriage into dual-military status. Both Soldiers receive every pay, allowance, and entitlement that a non-married officer of the same rank would receive (any differences are due to branch, duty, or location differences, which we’ll cover soon in the Deployment and Dependents posts). However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done. Swing through your finance office or S1 shop and ask for their help to knock out a DA 5960 (BAH status form) to annotate your marriage and status as dual-military. While this doesn’t immediately matter (it probably isn’t going to impact your pay), it will help future financial actions go smoother, such as Family Separation Allowance (FSA). The thing about filing for FSA is that the Finance Office needs to know that you are married in order to (approve and) pay you money for being separated from your spouse. See how that works? Same goes for if you have kids added as dependents, they only know that you’re entitled to an allowance if you tell them you are in that family status that authorizes the payment. Again, speaking from experience here, you’ll thank yourself instead of wondering later why you aren’t getting paid and filing a Pay Inquiry just to find out you failed to fill out a form. Just a tad embarrassing, that is. After a full month pay cycle (reasons for which I will skip over as they are boring, tedious administrative reasons), check your LES to make sure that your administrative data at the bottom lists you as married. Then, while you’re already checking your records, pull your ORB and make sure that you have (at least) 1 dependent listed (your spouse) and that the comments section lists you as Married to a Service Member. When you’ve got your ORB and LES updated plus MilConnect updated, you know your records are good to go!

Speaking of things that the finance office processes, plan some leave, if you haven’t already. You very well may have taken some vacation time together as a couple immediately following your marriage. (If you’re a same-sex couple, make sure that your leave was marked as non-chargeable leave, in accordance with DoDI 1327.06, dated 19 May 2016. If you are CONUS and live greater than 100 miles away from a US State that allows same-sex couples to marry, you are authorized up to 7 days of non-chargeable leave. If you are OCONUS, eligible Soldiers may be granted 10 days of non-chargeable leave. For a dual-military couple, both Soldiers may be granted marriage leave.) If you weren’t able to take some leave together, then I recommend that you plan some! Do what you need to do to take a break, put the rank (and the government-issued phones) down, and enjoy time with each other just being married.

Since we’re talking recommendations, I also recommend you check out the option to transfer your GI Bill to your dual-mil spouse. Transfering your education benefits (TEB) is available to anyone who has dependents registered in DEERS, including dual-military couples (with or without children). Executing a TEB is very straightforward and done through MilConnect. (Now’s a great time to log back into MilConnect and check out the benefits drop-down menu at the top of the page.) You must transfer at least 1 month of your GI Bill when executing a TEB, but you might as well enter all 36 months into the text box if your only dependent is your spouse because you can adjust it later if your situation or mind changes. At this point, you might be thinking this is all well and good…if you have kids. If you’re an officer, you already have a Bachelor’s degree and maybe already have a Master’s, so why not transfer the GI Bill to the next generation? That’s an excellent conclusion to come to and a valid plan to execute. But how does this apply to dual-military without kids? Easy, it’s the same process, you only serve the Military Service Obligation (MSO) once, concurrently with any other MSOs, and you get it out of the way upfront. Sure, it’s a bit redundant to have you and your spouse to transfer your GI BIlls to each other because all you really did was commit each other to a 4 year MSO. (To be fair, I don’t know many folks who toast wine glasses over a new MSO, especially right after finishing your initial ADSO.) However, if you birth or adopt children later in your career, you can simply add them to your TEB in MilConnect, they can access the benefit right away, and you don’t add another MSO. (Now THAT is something to toast about!) And if, at the end of it all, kids aren’t a part of your marriage, then you don’t lose a benefit anyway and you’ve only stuck around 4 more years. The upside to that is that if you’re committed to the Blended Retirement System, it’s a few more years the Army is paying back into your TSP (which you are so wisely chipping into every month, right?). If all of those intrigues you, then be sure to check out the GI Bill definition under Resources to review your eligibility to execute the TEB. This recommendation is merely an invitation to look at your options, and then make an informed decision.

The last piece of advice of this post is one that some readers might have thought would be the first – changing your name. I humbly suggest that no matter your gender, marriage, or background, the Army does not so much as require or recommend a name change, but instead sees it as optional. We’ll get more into the pros, cons, and processes in a bonus post (surprise!) that I’ll add next week, so I’ll keep it to the basics of how-to for now. In order to change your name, take your signed and notarized marriage certificate to your local Social Security officer to file for a new Social Security card with a new name for reasons of marriage. Then, make your way to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in your state of residence and have your license replaced with your new name. You’ll need this new identification when you go back to the local CAC office to get a new military ID. Before you go to DEERS and get a new CAC, execute a DA 4187 with your servicing S1 shop for a name change so that your name gets changed in eMILPO (that’s RLAS, SIDPERS, and/or a Federal Recognition orders for USAR/ARNG). If you don’t do the administrative system changes prior to getting a new CAC, the change in DEERS in name will default to whatever is in your Component’s administrative system. Also, don’t forget throughout this process to plan time to have new nameplates produced for your new surname for both your Combat Uniforms and dress uniform, but make sure you wait until your CAC gets switched out, otherwise your name won’t be consistent, and we all want to role model appropriate behavior for our subordinates. Also, wouldn’t you give someone strange looks if their uniform didn’t match their CAC?

A new CAC should trigger / reinforce changes in MilConnect as far as Enterprise email registering your new name properly, but if you have any problems, consult your local S6 (or IT department) for help with that. After you get the admin name change and get a new CAC, swing by the TRICARE desk at your on-post clinic and notify them of your name change so any blood draws, prescriptions, or appointments all show the same name that is in DEERS. Failure to do this in a timely manner, as I can again attest happened to me, will only lead to confusion. I specifically had a situation where a very confused Soldier from Clinic Labs called to inform me that there was someone else with my SSN in their system and could I come in immediately to remedy the problem? (I informed the Soldier of my recent marriage and that quickly solved the miscommunication.) Lastly, I highly recommend putting a notarized copy of your marriage certificate in your wallet / work bag / daily uniform. Between changes in marital status and potential name changes, it really can be the easiest course of action to relieve a situation by showing your marriage certificate and moving onto the next challenge for Family matters from there. Despite all these necessary steps, keep in mind that there will still be hiccups, even years later. For me it’s been over 5 years, 3 PCS’s, and 2 CACs since I got married and changed my name, and just this past week I logged onto a website that had my maiden name listed. It was inexplicable. But I took it with a grain of salt and a sense of humor, and moved out to do my work. Sometimes, you just gotta roll with the punches.

Okay, so that was a lot of information to cover in a single post. Let’s do a quick back-brief for immediate action following your dual-military marriage:
– Register for MACP via your S1 shop
– Go to DEERS with all your required documents and request a “dual-enrollment”
– Record with the Finance Office via S1 shop that you’re married
– Make sure your leave gets charged appropriately (or not at all, if it is non-chargeable leave)
– Check your LES and ORB for marriage, dependent, and dual-military updates, as applicable for each.
– Recommended: Calculate your eligible time for accruing the GI Bill and, if able, transfer your education benefits to each other and/or any dependents, if applicable
– Optional: Consider the pros & cons, and the process for changing your name, if desired.

Note: This post started off by discussing MACP. MACP is a Regular Army Component program only, and is not available for cross-component dual-military marriages or dual-ARNG couples. However, for dual-military couples across components, they can (according to HRC’s website as of 7 May 2018) mutually submit a DA 4187 through their chain of command for submission to HRC for a request for consideration of joint domicile.

How did you juggle executing these?
Do have any lessons learned through experience, as I did?
Did you guide a subordinate or fellow Soldier through this process?

Share your thoughts below!