Veterans Benefits

There are over 9 million surviving spouses of veterans currently living in the United States. Many of these surviving spouses are receiving long term care or will need some type of long term care in the near future, and there are funds available from the Veterans Administration (“VA”) to help pay for that care. Unfortunately, many of those who are eligible have no idea that any benefits exist for them or that an attorney can help them become eligible.

Benefits Available. There are three types of pension benefits available that provide monthly cash payments to surviving spouses who either have low income, long term health care needs, or both. The pension benefit is referred to as “Death Pension.” Below is an overview of the three benefits, and more detail will be provided on each benefit in the following paragraphs.

Before I became a lawyer, I wanted to be a historian like my dad. As part of his work as a historian, he recorded the oral histories of Jewish Holocaust survivors. He spent a great deal of time with members of the Phoenix-area Jewish community capturing their memories and experiences of one of the darkest periods of human history.

One such interview was with a Hungarian woman who was taken to the Auschwitz concentration/death camps in Poland as a teenager. This woman survived that nightmarish experience only because of a young American G.I. This soldier, while liberating Auschwitz from the Nazis, was walking amongst the piles of dead bodies when out of the corner of his eye, he saw a foot twitch beneath dozens of other bodies. It was her foot.

Despite the horror he undoubtedly felt as he pulled the emaciated, broken bodies from off of her, he removed her nearly lifeless body and rushed her to the American medics who eventually nursed her back to health.

Shortly after the war, she emigrated to the U.S. and obtained degrees in psychotherapy and professional counseling. She has since gone on to work as a licensed therapist with hundreds of U.S. Veterans, helping them to recover from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse challenges. She has dedicated her life to giving back to those who sacrificed so much to bring freedom to those who had been so oppressed by the Nazi regime. She, for one, understood the sacrifices made by these young people on her behalf.

I have just spent the last three days in beautiful San Diego, CA attending a workshop by one of the foremost legal authorities on Veterans Benefits Law, Georgia Elder Law attorney Victoria L. Collier. A veteran herself, Ms. Collier has amassed an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience in helping veterans qualify for, apply for, and actually obtain benefits that have already been earned, but are often overlooked by veterans and their families when searching for ways to pay for long-term care.

Many veterans, widows (or widowers) of veterans, and disabled children of veterans are not aware of the benefits that may be available to them. My own grandfather was an honorably discharged, World War II veteran who put everything on the line for his country. Nevertheless, he failed to obtain a number of these wonderful benefits merely because neither he, nor his family members (myself included) were aware of them, or of the steps required to claim them. Although I was not an attorney at that time, I often look back with regret at the fact that we were not more aware of the availability of these benefits. Only now do I realize how much that extra income could have helped him.