Barracks Lawyers

During my time in the military, especially before I was married and lived in the barracks, there was a common occurrences that I noticed happening.  A soldier would have a question, so they would ask a buddy of theirs that had been in longer than they had.  Although, the majority of the time these soldiers had good intentions, they would answer the question with what they had seen done or had heard about being done.  These individuals are commonly known as the barracks lawyers.  Often times, a junior soldier would take their advice and often times find themselves in trouble because whatever they had been told had been against a policy or regulations.

I've noticed the same thing is true on many of the military spouse sites that I see pop up from time to time on Facebook.  Many of these sites tend to have the same trend.  There are a lot of people that have opinions on things and so they throw those opinions up there as facts and when you have new spouses that don't know the ins and outs yet, you end up with someone in a bad circumstance. 

I've been out of the Army for about 15 months now, but my husband is still active duty and I'm active in different military based groups, so I maintain my knowledge of regulations.  For example, recently there was a change to a reg that it used to be that soldiers who were TDY would maintain they BAS or separats.  Since the BAS is for the soldier's benefit alone, the Army decided to save a little money and won't pay that entitlement when a soldier is gone.  So when a question was raised about separation pay, I explained that once 30 days hit separation pay kicked in, but to be aware that the BAS (which is often times more than the separation pay) would be going away.  To that I had responses ranging from someone not understanding why housing would stop being paid (BAH) to one individual who talked about two years ago when her husband was gone he still was paid his BAS. 

Now, I appreciate the fact that military spouses try to stick together and help each other out - after all, that's why I post information from time to time.  But just as the 'barracks lawyer' has become recognized saying - so has the saying 'setting someone up for failure'.  I just wish that individuals would not saying anything if they haven't taken the time to educate themselves on the ins and outs, because instead of helping, they are setting another spouse or soldier up for failure.