Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Since he wants a divorce, if I were your attorney, I'd advise that you invite him to serve you with the papers. This is important in this case for him to initiate proceedings, otherwise, if you initiate proceedings, if he is active military and deployed, you are going to have a long wait before anything gets done.

Once he files and serves you, you should immediately get counsel and have that attorney immediately file a motion for temporary orders, including a freeze on your husband's ability to move around cash, and to provide you with half the contents of the accounts on the day he left, or about $10,000.

In the very short run, since you are literally without money, you may want to go ahead and file for dissolution of marriage yourself and if possible get him served overseas. If he files a response to the petition and does not invoke the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act (SSCRA) then you ought to be able to proceed. In this context, you also ought to be able to obtain an emergency order to freeze the bank account until a hearing can be held to try to determine whether to give you half the funds. The only problem is that you don't even know what bank he opened a new account at, so this is problematic.

Either way, no matter what you do, I think you are better off contacting local counsel and having them handle it, because the SSCRA is going to add layers of complications on top of what will already be a difficult case, given that your husband has acted in such a calculated manner to begin with.