"The families of Americans who volunteer for the Armed Forces make many sacrifices, including moving from state to state due to military orders," Senator Feinstein said. "Current law eases the burden of frequent moves, but does not extend the same residency privileges to spouses. For example, a military wife cannot retain joint ownership of the family vehicle in most states. So couples are forced to exclude spouses from ownership documents. And service members can vote while deployed overseas, but this right is not always extended to spouses. This legislation will change this. At a time when we are demanding so much of our military families, this bill will provide relief to military spouses, whose support at home is the bedrock of our military community."

Under current law, our military men and women have the ability to claim a state of residence and maintain that residency regardless of where military orders may send them. Unfortunately, military spouses are not granted this same benefit. In addition to the stress of looking for a job every few years, this inequality means that military spouses have to deal with the other headaches of moving. Moreover, spouses are also much less likely to have their names on deeds and titles of family property because of the implications of moving to another state, leaving many feeling like second class citizens.

The Military Spouses Residency Relief Act would give a military spouse who moves out of state because of military orders the same option to claim one state of domicile, regardless of where they move. If a spouse chooses to take advantage of this, the servicemember and the spouse must have the same state of residence. This bill makes the move from station to station easier, removing the need to update drivers’ licenses, filing tax returns for multiple states, and changing vehicle and voter registrations with each move.