If you serve on active duty in the military there is a group of legislation and laws that help to protect and support your service. Some of the laws that govern life around your service to your country specifically help protect you from having to deal with things that could lessen your military readiness and preparedness. There are a group of laws that were incorporated into the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, or SCRA for short. It took into account earlier attempts at protecting Servicemembers from certain issues that would cause different stress and strain on the Servicemember.
The SCRA is a group of wide ranging protections that are designed for those people who are mobilized, or called to active duty in the United States Armed Forces. They suspend or postpone certain obligations and civil responsibilities to help the members of the service be able to more easily and readily respond to their military service duties. While it is not an act that forgives or totally removes the Servicemember from obligations, it does give the Servicemember some options in many civil and legal situations.
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It is made to suspend or postpone a number of different obligations of a civil nature to give the Servicemember the change to devote their full attention to duty. It also peripherally relieves stress and strain on the family of the Servicemember, and helps overall support the deployed Servicemember. Some examples of obligations that are protected to some extent are taxes, housing lease terminations, outstanding mortgage payments, debt incurred from credit cards, and other types of financial obligations. The current law was given an expansion that says that if a Servicemember is called to active duty and cant pay their rent, as long as their rent is less than $2,720 dollars a month they cannot be evicted, or their family evicted while they are on active duty.
Servicemembers who are ordered to a new duty station or chance of station have a right under the new laws to terminate a lease, even if they had just entered into it. This gives a Servicemember a legitimate option to escape a lease that otherwise they would be legally required to pay. The SCRA also says that the amount that can be charge for interest on loans that were started before the Servicemember entered active duty service cannot be more than six percent annually. Any amount above six percent has to be forgiven and written off by the debt holding organization.
