George M. Tronsrue, III v. Elsa M. Tronsrue

Petitioner comes to the Court presenting the same issue that has been presented in several other petitions brought by Counsel of Record on behalf of disabled veterans nationwide, who have had their personal right and entitlement to federal veterans’ benefits stripped from them by state courts that have ignored the Supremacy Clause’s absolute preemption over state law in this subject despite multiple admonitions by this Court that such benefits are offlimits and that they have no authority or jurisdiction to vest these benefits in anyone other than the statutorily designated beneficiary – the disabled veteran. See Howell v. Howell, 581 U.S. 214, 137 S. Ct. 1400 (2017). In this case, the Illinois Court of Appeals ruled that Petitioner’s disability pay, which is non-disposable and therefore expressly and automatically excluded from consideration as a divisible asset in state court divorce proceedings by 10 U.S.C. § 1408 (the Uniformed Services Former Spouses Protection Act (USFSPA)), could nonetheless be considered as a divisible asset because Petitioner had agreed to use that pay to satisfy a marital property division contained in a marital settlement agreement. The question presented is as follows: May a state court enforce a contractual agreement entered into between a disabled veteran and his former spouse, which agreement obligates the veteran to use restricted federal benefits to indemnify his