How Sean Kendall, Attorney at Law, Helps Protect Your Right to Survivorship Benefits
The duties of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) aren’t limited to former servicemen and women. After a sailor, soldier, Airman, coast guardsman, or Marine passes away, their surviving relatives are often entitled to certain forms of compensation and a continuation of different types of benefits.
In 2023, the VA revised its mission statement to emphasize its support both for wounded warriors and the loved ones they leave behind: “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.”
Although many survivors are eligible for benefits—including health care, cash compensation, and income-dependent pensions—the application process has never been easy. Sean Kendall, Attorney at Law, will help you understand your options and ensure that your application is reinforced by the evidence it needs to succeed. Read more to find out about survivorship benefits, then contact us today to speak to an experienced veterans law attorney.
Your Rights as a Surviving Spouse: How VA Benefits Could Help Navigate Life After Loss
The VA offers a wide range of benefits to surviving spouses. These include, but aren’t limited to:
- Internment in a National Cemetery or other military burial ground
- Federal Burial Benefits, which provide financial assistance for the costs of obtaining a cemetery plot and paying for funerary services
- Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC), a tax-free benefit paid monthly to eligible surviving spouses, children, and parents
- VA Survivors Pensions, which provide surviving spouses who haven’t remarried or unmarried children with a regular source of income
- VA-backed home loans
Requirements for Receiving VA Survivorship Benefits
Different types of benefits are subject to different requirements. Below is an overview of the conditions surviving spouses must meet.
Burial Benefits
In many cases, the VA won’t provide financial support for burial services for a Veteran dishonorably discharged. However, there are exceptions to this rule if the surviving spouse can provide evidence that the Veteran died:
- From a service-connected disability.
- While receiving care at a VA hospital or VA-contracted facility.
- While traveling to or from a VA facility for an examination or for care.
- With a pending disability claim, and would have likely been approved if they hadn’t passed away.
- While receiving a VA-authorized pension or VA-authorized compensation.
The VA may authorize benefits under other circumstances, and will sometimes permit allowances for veterans whose deaths weren’t service-connected.
Dependency and Indemnity Compensation
Unlike burial allowances, the requirements to receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation have more to do with your relationship with the Veteran than the exact circumstances of their death. If your spouse passed away from a service-connected condition, you’re eligible for DIC if either of the following apply:
- You lived with the Veteran without a break until their death.
- If you separated, you weren’t at fault for the separation.
You must also be able to prove one of the following:
- You married the Veteran within 15 years of their discharge, during which time their service-connected condition was diagnosed or began to worsen.
- You were married for at least one year.
- You had a child with the Veteran.
Some marriage-related restrictions are waived for spouses who are over the age of 55 and remarried on or after January 5, 2021.
VA Survivors Pensions
You may be eligible for this benefit if the Veteran received an other-than-dishonorable discharge and meets certain service- and deployment-related conditions. Your household income, and individual net worth, must also meet or fall below the threshold set by Congress.
The net worth limit effective for most of 2024 is $155,356. This limit doesn’t include the value of your home, your car, and personal possessions, like kitchen appliances.
VA-Guaranteed Home Loans
You may be entitled to a VA-backed home loan if your spouse:
- Was missing in action
- Was a prisoner of war
- Died in service from a service-related disability
VA-guaranteed home loans, like many other types of benefits, typically require that a surviving spouse didn’t remarry before a certain age.
Applying for Survivorship Benefits: What You Need to Know
You’re entitled to VA survivorship benefits if you meet all the requirements for the type of benefit you hope to obtain. However, even after decades of reform, the VA is still very much a bureaucracy. Its budget is set by Congress, which only allows benefits to be approved if the applicant—whether a living Veteran or their surviving spouse—files the right paperwork, and includes evidence of their eligibility alongside their application.
Filing the Right Paperwork for Your Survivorship Claim
Every claim for benefits begins with an application, with various forms used for different types of claims. The most commonly used survivorship forms include:
- VA Form 21P-530EZ, which is used for requests for non-service-connected burial allowances, service-connected burial allowances, plot or internment allowances, and transportation reimbursements.
- VA Form 21P-534EZ, which is used to apply for Survivors Pensions, DIC, and Increased Survivors Benefits.
- VA Form 26-1817, for unmarried surviving spouses who receive DIC benefits, a Survivors Pension, or Accrued Benefits and are seeking a VA-backed home loan.
VA claims forms typically detail what types of evidence are necessary to adjudicate your claim. Unfortunately, the instructions contained in agency paperwork isn’t always easy to understand—they may be written in what the VA considers “plain language,” but its instructions are often subject to lists of exceptions, and a litany of rules you’d only know about if you spent the next several years reading through court rulings.
Using Evidence to Reinforce Your Application
The evidence you’re required to provide for a survivorship claim depends on the form you are submitting, and the specific category of benefit for which you have applied. In most cases, surviving spouses will need—at minimum—the following types of evidence:
- Your marriage certificate
- Your deceased spouse’s service records, including their discharge paperwork
- Your spouse’s medical records, both from the VA and any other facilities where they sought and obtained care
- Your spouse’s death certificate
- Documentation showing that your spouse received a rating for a service-connected disability, or that they were receiving disability-related benefits at the time of their death
Your eligibility for benefits such as Dependency and Indemnity Compensation could be further influenced by the circumstances of your spouse’s death, the severity of their disability rating, and whether they were deployed in combat. Making any mistake—even a minor oversight or omission—could lead to your application being rejected or, at the very least, delayed.
Processing Timelines, and What to Do If Your Claim is Delayed or Rejected
The amount of time it takes to receive a decision from the Department of Veterans Affairs varies. It could be affected by:
- The accuracy of the information submitted in the application.
- The quality of evidence attached to your claim.
- Whether you or your spouse were already receiving VA-backed benefits.
If an application is free from mistakes, you may hear back from the VA within a matter of months. But if a section was left blank, or you couldn’t obtain all of the records needed to substantiate a deployment or service-connected disability, the VA will most likely ask for more evidence—triggering an additional series of reviews that could lead to an unexpectedly long wait or rejection.
A VA Survivors and Dependents Benefits Lawyer Helps Streamline Your Application Process
You don’t have to take your chances of missing benefits earned through a spouse’s sacrifice.
If you’re contesting an adverse survivors benefits determination, Sean Kendall, Attorney at Law, can protect your eligibility by:
- Analyzing your case and the evidence needed to support an appeal.
- Securing service records and your spouse’s medical history.
- Obtaining physician statements, “buddy letters,” and other evidence to prove that your spouse had a service-connected disability or was entitled to a higher rating.
- Helping you determine whether you’re entitled to any additional benefits.
- Exploring your options for appeals, and taking your case to court if the department refuses to authorize the benefits you deserve.