Dax Elliot Carpenter v. Julie Elizabeth Carpenter

Congress’s enumerated military powers preempt all state law concerning disposition of military benefits. Howell v. Howell, 137 S. Ct. 1400, 1404, 1406 (2017). Where Congress has not affirmatively granted the state authority to treat veterans’ benefits received by a non-retired, disabled service member as “income” for purposes of support obligations to dependents, and, in fact, excludes such benefits from being considered as income and affirmatively protects these benefits from “all legal and equitable process whatever” whether “before or after receipt” by the veteran, is Rose v. Rose, 481 U.S. 619 (1987), which ruled that the state could count such benefits as an available asset for purposes of calculating a disabled veteran’s support obligations in state court divorce proceedings, a legitimate basis for the State of Michigan to usurp the Supremacy Clause and, in direct conflict with positive federal law, order Petitioner, a non-retired, disabled veteran to include these monies as “income” available for purposes of calculating his child support obligations?

Where, after Rose, supra, Congress gave the Secretary of Veterans Affairs exclusive jurisdiction to “decide all questions of law and fact necessary to a decision” affecting “the provision of benefits…to veterans or the dependents or survivors of veterans,” see 38 U.S.C. § 511 (emphasis added); and, “as to any such question” made such decisions “final and conclusive” and unreviewable “by any other official or by any court,” id. (emphasis added); and created an Article I Court in the Veterans Judicial Review Act (VJRA), Pub. L. No. 100-687, 102 Stat. 4105, for exclusive appellate review of such decisions, does a state court have jurisdiction or authority to directly or indirectly order a disposition of these benefits in a manner contrary to the initial benefit determination?