From what I have learned from Army friends and the all-knowing Internet (man, there is a LOT of incorrect information floating out there online!), "home of record" is where you (the service member) were living when you joined the Army. So for us, that would be Virginia. This never changes. "Legal residence" is where you call home, where you pay taxes, where you plan to live when you retire. For us, that sounds like it should be Michigan. This allows service members and non-working dependents to maintain a driver's license and state license plates etc. in the state of "legal residence", even ( especially) when stationed in another state.
Now, to me, this sounds like if we go to the office and explain that we were both raised in Michigan, have family in Michigan, and hope to move to Michigan when Matt retires, then they will put Michigan as our "legal residence". We can then go to Michigan (a good excuse for a trip) and transfer the deeds to our cars, get new driver's licenses, and get new license plates for our cars. This means that we will use my parents address as our address while we travel for the Army (have to make sure this won't affect them at all if our address is the same as theirs). This means we will not need to change all our info each time we move to a new state, which is annoying and expensive.
Why can't we just keep the license plates etc. we have now? Matt's is VA and we just renewed it. I just hope it works because I'm sure someone else lives at our old address. I worked it out so the new stickers will arrive in the mail here... And I'm hoping the card will be forwarded to us with our other mail. My license plates are OK since we bought the car here. Same issue once we move. How could we renew if the address is no longer ours? We could possibly hold off on changing everything until next spring since our plates should be valid until July/ August respectfully. We'll see about that.
Having Michigan as our "legal residence" also means we would vote absentee in MI elections and pay state taxes to MI and not the state we are currently residing in. This is especially beneficial if we move to different states in the same year. No one wants to pay double taxes.
Added bonus, we get MI plates and licenses again! Matt and I are very proud of our MI roots. I'll be happy if I can get lovely MI plates as opposed to OK.
So this looks like the best option. I am excited for the possibility and hope I'm not missing anything major on the websites I've been reviewing. I really wasn't looking forward to switching driver's licenses and license plates each move. We'll be coming back to OK at least once and it's expensive to switch things over here!
So in the Army, check into what you want your "legal residence" to be. It could save you the headache of transferring legal documents and remembering everything you have to switch each PCS.
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