May a state court enforce a contractual agreement entered into between a disabled veteran and his former spouse, which agreement obligates the veteran to use restricted federal benefits to indemnify his former spouse, where there is no federal statute expressly authorizing the state to exercise jurisdiction or authority over such benefits; where a federal statute (38 U.S.C. § 5301) expressly prohibits the state court from using 'any legal or equitable power whatever' to compel the veteran to abide by such an agreement; and where that same statute expressly prohibits and voids any and all such agreements?

Petitioner comes to the Court presenting the same issue that has been presented in several other petitions brought by Counsel of Record on behalf of disabled veterans nationwide, who have had their personal right and entitlem ent to federal veterans’ benefits stripped from them by state courts that have ignored the Supremacy Clause’s absolute preemption over state law in this subject despite multiple admonitions by this Court th at such benefits are offlimits and that they have no authority or jurisdiction to vest these benefits in anyone other than the statutorily designated beneficiary – the disabled veteran. See Howell v. Howell , 581 U.S. 214, 137 S. Ct. 1400 (2017). In this case, the Illinois Court of Appeals ruled that Petitioner’s disability pay, which is non-disposable and therefore expressly and automatically excluded from consideration as a divisible asset in state court divorce proceedings by 10 U.S.C. § 1408 (the Uniformed Services Former Spouses Protection Act (USFSPA)), could nonetheless be considered as a divisible asset because Petitioner had agreed to use that pay to satisfy a ma rital property division contained in a marital settlement agreement. The question presented is as follows: May a state court enforce a contractual agreement entered into between a disabled veteran and his former spouse, which agreement obligates the veteran to use restricted federal benefits to indemnify his ii former spouse, where there is no federal statute expressly authorizing the state to exercise jurisdiction or authority over such benefits; where a federal statute (38 U.S.C. § 5301) expressly prohibits the state court from using “any legal or equitable power whatever” to compel the veteran to abide by such an agreement; and where that same statute expressly prohibits and voids any and all such agreements?