A Short-Marriage Uncontested Florida Divorce When One Spouse Is on Active Duty

When one spouse is in the military and stationed outside Florida, couples often assume the divorce will be complicated. This case shows how a clean, agreed settlement can still move quickly.

The couple had been married a little over a year and had grown apart. There were no children, no real property, no vehicles, no retirement accounts, and no debts. Each spouse kept their own individual bank accounts and belongings, and both waived alimony. The wife lived in Florida and was the resident spouse for purposes of the six-month Florida residency requirement; the husband was on active duty and had since been stationed in another state.

Because the husband was a servicemember, the settlement agreement addressed the items that matter in a military divorce: no military retired pay was being divided, each spouse waived any claim to the other's military retirement benefits, the wife agreed to be removed as the beneficiary of the husband's Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance within 30 days of the judgment, and the parties acknowledged that her TRICARE coverage would end when the judgment was entered. The wife also asked to have her former name restored, which the court granted as part of the judgment.

Each spouse signed and had their signature notarized separately over video with a Florida-commissioned online notary, from their own state, on different days. Along the way the firm caught that the name printed on the wife's marriage certificate differed from the name on her current driver's license, and corrected the documents to match her current legal name before anything was signed.

The signed packet was filed 8 days after intake, the firm submitted the proposed Final Judgment to the assigned judge the same day, and the judge entered the Final Judgment without a hearing five days later. Filing to Final Judgment took 5 days, and intake to Final Judgment 13 days.