Cite as: 503 U. S. 594 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
Carty we said that "[t]he community property division of military retired pay rests on the premise that that pay, like a typical pension, represents deferred compensation for services performed during the marriage." 453 U. S., at 221. Had we accepted as definitive for all purposes Tyler's characterization of such pay as current income, our decision in Mc-Carty would have been simple because we would have been foreclosed from treating military retired pay as deferred compensation. Such a holding would have been a much easier way of deciding McCarty than the alternative basis for decision—that the application of California's community property law conflicted with the federal military retirement scheme.
Finding no support for the Kansas Supreme Court's holding either in differences in the method of calculating benefits or in our precedents discussing military retirement pay, we examine congressional intent, as inferred through other applicable statutes that treat military retirement pay. Promptly after McCarty, for example, Congress enacted the Uniformed Services Former Spouses' Protection Act, 10 U. S. C. § 1408(c)(1), which negated McCarty's holding by giving the States the option of treating military retirement pay "either as property solely of the member or as property of the member and his spouse in accordance with the law of the jurisdiction of such court." Because the premise behind permitting the States to apply their community property laws to military retirement pay is that such pay is deferred compensation for past services, see McCarty, supra, at 221, Congress clearly believed that payment to military retirees is in many respects not comparable to ordinary remuneration for current services. To extend to States the option of deeming such benefits as part of the marital estate as a matter of state law would be inconsistent with the notion that military retirement pay should be treated as indistinguishable from compensation for reduced current services.
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