On December 19, 2003, there was a powerful bit of legislation signed into law that gave servicemembers in every branch of the armed forces plenty of protection in the financial sense. However, a lot of people still don’t know about it, and it ends up causing military families a lot of trouble getting their lives in order when there’s a financial problem.

There are some major legal protections that you need to know about, and we’ve covered the highlights for you.

First and foremost, there is protection when it come sot the termination of residential leases. The SCRA allows servicemembers to break a lease when they go onto active. Even if the lease was entered into before going onto active duty.

What if you are a military family that’s received PCS orders or orders to deploy for a period of at least 90 days or more? Well under the new law, you can break the lease without penalty.

Of course, a lot of landlords think that you don’t know about these laws and that means that they will try to pull a fast one on you if you let them get away with it. Remind them that under the SCRA you have this right and include evidence of your PCS orders — it’s not your fault. The military requires that you comply, so you have to do that — the government’s need for you to be in a certain place trumps anything that the civilian landlord might have to say. This obviously doesn’t apply to government housing because they don’t need to be threatened into letting you leave — they have already dealt with military families a thousand times — that’s what they’re there for!

When it comes to automobile leases, there are other protections that need to be pointed out here. You see, you will be able to cancel the lease as long as you will be on active duty for at least 180 continuous days. This only applies for car leases that are entered into before you go on active duty.

You can also cancel the lease if you will be PCS’ing or if you will be deployed for 180 days or longer.

You have to make sure that you make the request to cancel the lease in writing. Just doing things over the phone isn’t good enough, and it will usually lead to a lot of problems for you. So the more that you can do in writing, the better off you will be. You also need to have a copy of your orders with you at all times.

If you are facing eviction, you have options here as well. Under the SCRA, you can have a stay or a postponement for up to 3 months if it can be proven that the servicemember’s military duties have materially affected his or her ability to pay the rent on time.

There are also protections against interest on a loan — if you can prove that your military obligation has made it hard for you to pay your credit products of any kind, and then you can have your interest rate capped at 6% for the length of your military obligation. This can actually help you pay your debts faster because you’re not going to have to deal with all of that interest!

There are a lot of different things that you’re going to have protection from as a servicemember, but you have to know your rights. Make sure that you really do take the time to look up the SCRA for yourself. If you ever get pulled into a court action, it’s the things that you know that really will make all of the difference!