Family resources - Navy Times

Survivors’ benefit denied to spouses of fallen troops

A $50 monthly survivors’ allowance that begins Oct. 1 is facing criticism from advocates for widows and widowers because the payments are small and will not go to survivors of service members who die on active duty.

“Some young widows are complaining the money isn’t even enough to cover a tank of gas,” said Rose Lee, a member of the government relations team for Gold Star Wives.

Lee said she and other Gold Star Wives were shocked to learn active-duty deaths were not covered by the compromise benefit approved by lawmakers as part of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act signed into law in January.

“Nobody mentioned to us that the $50 allowance was going to be paid to few people,” she said.

Lee said it is surprising that Congress would approve a benefit that does not go to the surviving spouses of any of the 4,400-plus troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said lawmakers drew a distinction between active-duty deaths and those in retirement because retirees pay for survivor benefits through deductions in their monthly retired pay, and active-duty members make no direct contribution to survivor benefits.

Additionally, the government provides survivors of active-duty deaths a death gratuity and group life insurance, which are not paid to survivors of retirees.

The new allowance will be paid only to survivors of people who were receiving retired pay at the time of death, or to survivors of so-called “gray-area” reservists who qualify for retirement but are not yet receiving retired pay because they are younger than age 60.

Lee said the small allowance is a far cry from what survivors had demanded — an end to the dollar-for-dollar offset required in military survivor benefits if a survivor is also receiving veterans dependency and indemnity compensation.

The $50 payment, which will increase by $10 a year for the next five years and expire on March 1, 2016, does not come close to making up for the offset, Lee said, which can be as much as $12,000 a year.

Rick Jones of the National Association for Uniformed Services agreed the compromise was a surprise.

“We were really disappointed — I thought we had won the issue,” Jones said, referring to support for an end to any offset between military and veterans survivor benefits.

Because of the offset, the survivor of an E-6 or below who dies either on active-duty duty or in retirement of a service-connected cause gets little or no monthly payment for the military benefit, known as SBP, while receiving $948 a month from the veterans benefit known as dependency and indemnity compensation, or DIC.

The Military Officers Association of America calculates that DIC exceeds SBP for most mid-grade and junior enlisted families, and that even families of mid-grade and senior officers can lose more than $12,000 a year as a result of the offset.

DISCUSS: Survivors’ benefit