Kevin Lee Boutte v. Yvonne Renea Boutte

The Supreme Court of Louisiana denied Petitioner’s appeal on purely state law grounds of estoppel and res judicata in affirming a Court of Appeals’ opinion that applied these doctrines to Petitioner’s divorce settlement in which he was held to have agreed to dispossess himself of his veterans’ disability pay despite a federal statute, 38 U.S.C.S. § 5301(a)(1) and (3) (§ 5301), which prohibits a state court from entering any “legal or equitable” orders to enforce such an agreement and which deems them “void from inception.” In Howell v. Howell, 137 S. Ct. 1400, 1405 (2017), this Court, for the first time, ruled that § 5301 removed all authority from state courts to vest these statutory disability benefits in anyone other than the designated beneficiary. The Court stated it does not matter that a divorce agreement may be said to “vest” the former spouse with an immediate right to the percentage of the veteran’s disposable military benefits, because the availability of such pay is contingent on the veteran’s potential receipt of restricted disability pay in lieu of disposable retirement pay. Id. at 1405-1406. Not only is the state prohibited from enforcing such agreements, but too, it may not issue orders requiring the veteran to “reimburse” or “indemnify” the former spouse. Id. at 1406. “Regardless of their form, such reimbursement and indemnification orders displace the federal rule and stand as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the purposes and objectives of Congress. All such orders are thus preempted.” Id.