How Active Duty Military Can Access Legal Assistance
This past May 23, in honor of the upcoming Memorial Day commemoration, a friend and colleague, Neil Hendershot, included in his blog valuable references to estate planning information for military personnel. Neil, a Harrisburg attorney with the law firm of Goldberg Katzman, PC, hosts the Pennsylvania Elder, Estate & Fiduciary Law Blog, a prolific site on which can be found everything from Senior Crime Prevention Programs to recent public Will contests like the Barnes Foundation dispute. In glancing through it the reader might learn everything from calculating virtual age to how to plan estates involving firearms. It can be found at www.paelderestatefiduciary.blogspot.com. For the article on estate planning for military personnel, scroll down to Friday, May 23, 2008. Before committing a crime, knowing your rights when being court martialed, can be beneficial as you don’t know the punishments given by a court. If this crime is drug related, such as you being found in possession of controlled substances, contact Drug Crimes Attorneys to assist in your defense immediately. An expert drug crime lawyer can help defend your case.
Neil noted that his article coincided with the call up of Pennsylvania National Guard reservists from Fort Indiantown Gap in Annville within a year. He provided links to several Military web sites to assist servicemen and women in preparing for active duty. Some of the websites also suggest to buy guns & ammo from Palmetto State Armory for military purposes.
Of greatest interest to me was the link to the Judge Advocate General’s website and its legal resources. This can be found at www.jagcnet.army.mil/legal. The JAG site brings to mind just how many areas of life can be affected by deployment. Subjects addressed with brief summaries of the law and practical advice include automobiles, consumer and contract matters, estate planning, family law, housing and real estate, immigration, insurance, landlord and tenant, military matters, mobilization, deployment and demobilization, money matters, reserve components, Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act, tax, veterans, wounded warriors and other miscellaneous matters such as civilian court matters, legal residence, being sued when unable to get to court, and how to obtain vital records such as birth and marriage certificates.
The Power of Attorney Application provided on-line at the site is specific to military issues and provides clear direction regarding what the servicemember directs the agent to do or not to do while he or she is gone and the limits of the power. The cautionary at the end of the document states “Making a General Power of Attorney (GPOA) is an important action with serious consequences. Your GPOA gives someone else the legal authority to act on your behalf—to do anything that you could do. With a GPOA, your agent can (for example) rent or buy a house with your money, borrow money that you must repay, sell your car, sue someone for you, or remove all funds from your bank account.
While a GPOA can be very helpful it can also be very dangerous.” It then suggests giving a Special Power of Attorney where the servicemember wants to authorize an agent to perform specific acts and limiting the duration of a Power of Attorney to no longer than 1 year or a shorter date. The advice is geared to the obvious fact relative to deployment that, while the servicemember is gone, an agent remaining here without supervision could cause a great deal of harm. On the other hand, granting such a power to a spouse, parent, or other person who is trusted to handle it properly can relieve some of the worry of being away. Powers can be revoked and the document suggests obtaining legal advice to do so, if needed.
`The site provides a convenient Legal Assistance Locator and suggests beginning with the installation’s Legal Assistance Office.
One law of critical interest to active duty servicemembers is the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act passed in 2003. A source for discussion of this law on the web is the American Bar Association’s site and its Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel at www.abanet.org/legalservices/lamp/home.html. The law replaces the prior Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Relief Act and provides relief, if requested, from certain civil legal actions for active duty military personnel. First, it can mandate a ninety day stay of a civil action upon the servicemember’s request. Second, it may provide a six percent interest cap on certain pre-service loans if requested in writing by the servicemember. Finally, it contains relief provisions regarding residential leases to prevent eviction and also to terminate leases where orders are received for permanent change of station or deployment for more than 90 days. Other provisions are less significant.
All of these references, of course, serve as a mere beginning point. Credit issues have been in the forefront recently. Occasionally I am contacted by a servicemember concerned about an elderly relative at home or there are issues on estate documents. It brings home the sacrifices that members of our armed forces and their families make along with the legal issues that they confront every day.
About the Author Janet Colliton
Esquire, Colliton Law Associates, P.C. Janet Colliton has practiced law for over 38 years, 37 of them in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her practice, Colliton Law Associates, PC, is limited to elder law, Medicaid, including advice, applications and appeals, and other benefits planning including Veterans benefits, life care and special needs planning, guardianships, retirement, and estate planning and administration.