Navy Join Spouse Program

Marrying another Sailor has many advantages like increased BAH and 3yr Sea/Shore Cycles regardless of Rating. But the advantage that most talk about is called the ‘Join Spouse’ program. This is a DoD wide program which aims to TRY to get military married couples assigned to the same station, or at least to stations that are within 100 miles of each other. (The Navy standard is 90 driving miles.)

The key word here is TRY! This is NOT a guarantee, as with anything else, the ‘needs of the Navy’ always come first. The general consensus seems to be that this works out about 80% of the time. That still means that about 20% don’t get collocated!

But lets stay on the positive side of things and assume that you will be part of the 80%. To get there you need to know that this is NOT something that just happens automatically! There are at least a couple of things that you have to do to Join your Spouse.

1. Let the Navy know you are Married. This may seem obvious but it bears stating again that the Navy will not automatically ‘know’ that you have gotten married. Nor will they simply take your word for it that you are married. At the least you will both need to file your Marriage Certificate with personnel to indicate who your spouse is.

2. File a request to be Collocated. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, if you have been in the Navy for more than a couple of months, that you have to fill out a request to Join your Spouse. The key here is that BOTH of you have to file a request, and both of you need to show that you want to be collocated, in order to be collocated. For Officers the form is NAVPERS 1301/85, and for Enlisted it is NAVPERS 1306/7.

If you are not currently lucky enough to be collocated, there are MANY factors that will go into when you would first be eligible to collocate, and how that would happen. The Navy uses OPNAVINST 1300-1000 to spell out the general policy and the specific conditions under which collocation can and can’t occur. It is only 6 pages long so I do suggest reading through it to know what is truly available to you and what policy actually is. There are unfortunately too many myths and fables about this floating around the Navy.

Before you file your requests, decide who will be the leading member, so your forms can be in agreement. This is typically based on who is receiving orders first. But circumstances may make the other way around a better fit. (Location of the other Sailor, future assignments, dependents,  etc…) In that case, you would also indicate that you are looking to receive early orders in order to collocate. Again, this isn’t a guarantee but it is an available option.

This should give you the basics of how to participate in the Join Spouse program in the Navy. It doesn’t cover all situations but it should cover most. Of course all of the details are in OPNAVINST 1300-1000 so use that as a reference for anything I haven’t covered.