Q. I'm on active duty and enrolled in Tricare Prime. My wife and stepchild are not U.S. citizens, although they have visas. We are waiting for their Social Security cards to be issued. Both my wife and stepchild are enrolled in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System. What sort of health care coverage can my family receive? If they're enrolled in DEERS, are they automatically enrolled in Tricare Standard?
A. If your wife and stepchild were deemed eligible for registration in DEERS, then they are fully eligible for Tricare coverage under your sponsorship.
Active-duty family members may enroll in Prime along with their active-duty sponsors, or they may use Tricare Standard, which requires no enrollment; when they need care, all they have to do is make sure they see a provider who is Tricare-authorized.
Children under 10 generally are not required to have military ID cards, but for your spouse to use Tricare, she will need a military ID card. Again, if she was allowed to register in DEERS, then she should be eligible for an ID card. You can take care of that through the ID Card/DEERS office on your military installation.
Q. My soon-to-be ex-husband and I were married in 1994. He was in the reserves for four years before he went on active duty in 1998. He retired from the military in 2005 with 30 years of creditable service. Will our kids and I be covered under Tricare once the divorce is final?
A. You will not be covered. There are three bedrock requirements of what is known as the "20/20/20" rule that grants former spouses continued Tricare coverage after divorce:
1. The service member must have at least 20 years of military service creditable toward retirement benefits.
2. The marriage must have lasted at least 20 years.
3. The marriage and the military service must have overlapped by at least 20 years.
If you married your husband in 1994 and he retired from the military in 2005, your marriage and his military service overlapped by only 11 years — leaving you nine years short of meeting the third criterion of the 20/20/20 rule.
Your children, however, may remain covered by Tricare under his sponsorship as a military retiree if they are under age 21 (or under age 23 if full-time college students), are unmarried, and do not have access to employer-sponsored insurance through their own jobs. If they are beyond those age thresholds but meet the other two requirements, they remain eligible for a relatively new program called Tricare Young Adult, which requires enrollment and payment of monthly premiums, until age 26.
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