Good morning from Japan!
I have a question regarding housing allowance. I read a bunch on BAH, but could not find any information regarding OHA. We are currently stationed in Japan, and if my family decides to stay out here while I am attending OCS. Would I receive OHA? Thank you!!
My spouse is Japanese BTW, so she does not need SOFA status.
I think you're going to have a few issues here, possibly, and pardon me for not knowing everything there, but:
1. If she's there on SOFA and you're getting OHA for dependents, and you have permission from her to remain in Japan, that won't be an issue. You need permission from both your own command and from CNFJ; they work out the details with the Japanese government to keep a SOFA sponsored person around. There are a couple of different tiers of what level of support they get.
1.A. That's dependent on if you're going to OCS as a TDY or as a PCS. I actually never thought about this and don't know the answer and neither really make sense to me. If it's TDY, then, you have no reason to worry about it. If it's a PCS, you need to talk with your legal and admin departments to get the right paperwork for her to stay as a SOFA sponsor and for you to continue collecting OHA. Do you have a PCS order to your ultimate duty station (Flight School presumably?) with OCS as an I-Stop? If that's the case, you should be able to argue in the paperwork pretty easily she should stay for the duration of your time at OCS. Ultimately, my experience was that the folks at CNFJ were very reasonable, but absolutely needed the paperwork in earrrrrly (60+ days) and done completely correctly.
