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California Legal Protections for Reservists and Active Duty Servicemembers

If you are in the military in any way, you’re likely entitled to various legal protections under California law that — at least in theory — are meant to make it easier for you to perform your military service. These laws allow, for instance, may allow you to resume your old health insurance when your active duty service ends. It may allow you to enjoy a reduced interest rate on loans and other debts when you’re on active duty. There are housing-related benefits as well related to rental agreements and mortgages. In this post, I’m going to describe California’s laws in this area in a very general or high-level way. There are a lot of laws so I can’t go over all of them because if I did, this post would be enormous. As I make follow-on posts over time, however, I will probably hit a lot of these topics anyway. I am going to start this process by describing some common themes or ideas that all of these laws have that hopefully make it so all who are entitled to these benefits actually receive them. When working on cases in this area of California law, the first thing I ask is what kind of military member am I working with? By that, I mean is this person an active duty service member (e.g. Lance Corporal in the Marines), a member of the California National Guard, or a member of the Naval Reserves who has been called to active duty? As with anything in the law, technicalities and definitions like this can be important. The benefits provided are similar,...

Personal Injury Damages in a California Divorce

In a prior post, I went over the definition of “separate property” in New York. Under that definition (Section 236(B)(1)(d) of New York’s Domestic Relations Law, if you need to look it up), one of the things that is separate property in divorce in New York is damages received by a spouse for their personal injuries. In this post, I’m going to go over that same question — namely, is money received for personal injuries separate or not — for California. California and New York are similar politically, but remember that when it comes to divorces, California is a community property state and New York is not. Does that affect the answer? In short, yes. Money received for personal injuries sustained during the marriage is community property in California, but it is not automatically subject to division in the way community property typically is in a divorce. There are three California statutes that apply here, all of which are in the California Family Code. The first is section 780 of the California Family Code which provides the following. This entire statute is important, but I’ve put the super important parts in bold. “Except as provided in Section 781 and subject to the rules of allocation set forth in Section 2603, money and other property received or to be received by a married person in satisfaction of a judgment for damages for personal injuries, or pursuant to an agreement for the settlement or compromise of a claim for such damages, is community property if the cause of action for the damages arose during the marriage.” From this, the general rule...