We celebrate our veterans with parades and discounts to certain stores and restaurants, but many veterans are unaware of the additional ways their country would like to honor their service.
Many veterans know that they are entitled to compensation for service-related injuries. But the Department of Veterans Affairs also provides benefits for veterans who were not injured in the line of duty.
The VA Improved Pension Plan (commonly referred to as Aid & Attendance) is available to veterans who are either 65 years of age or older or 100 percent permanently disabled, meet certain income and asset requirements and were honorably discharged after at least 90 days of service with at least one of those days during a wartime period.
VA rules and regulations are complex, often difficult to understand, and change frequently. The pension application process can take a matter of months if all of the paperwork is properly filled out or it can take years if missing details result in a lengthy appeals process.
A VA-accredited attorney can help a veteran navigate the VA pension process. But equally important is knowing how the VA pension may affect the rest of the veteran’s estate plan. This is where the
expertise of a reputable elder law attorney, who is also VA accredited, comes in.
An elder law attorney is well versed on how the VA pension may affect a senior’s Medicaid and Medicare benefits, income taxation, inheritance tax and other financial factors. A reputable elder law attorney can help you see the whole picture and take the best steps for your situation.
For example, some veterans think they make too much to qualify for the benefit when that is not necessarily true. An accredited VA attorney can help you determine whether you meet the limited income requirements. Some veterans are unaware that the VA permits income deductions of qualified medical expenses and does not include one’s home in asset calculations.
An accredited VA attorney also may be able to help you find out about additional benefits for which you might qualify. A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office long-term study found that of the veterans currently receiving pension benefits, 62 percent may be eligible for additional benefits, but only 22 percent were receiving those additional benefits because they were unaware of the programs.
The VA offers additional benefits for veterans who are housebound or need assistance with activities of daily living. The VA Aid and Attendance Pension Benefit helps veterans and their surviving spouses pay for home care, assisted living or nursing care as well as medical supplies and medicines.
Aid and Attendance (A&A) Pension Benefits apply to all veterans who meet the basic pension requirements and have been certified by a doctor as needing assistance with daily living activities or widows or widowers of such veterans who neither divorced nor remarried.
Fewer than 10 percent of U.S. seniors are taking advantage of the A&A benefit.
The A&A Monthly Pension Rates for Veterans increased 1.5 percent in 2014 to $1,732 for a single veteran, $2,085 for a married veteran and $1,130 for a surviving spouse of a veteran. By comparison, the basic pension rates are $1,054 for a single veteran, $1,380 for a married veteran and $707 for a surviving spouse.
Our country promised to take care of its veterans in their later years for serving their country. An accredited VA attorney can help you receive the benefits you earned.
Richard Barid and Michael Smith are co-founders of Savannah-based Smith Barid LLC, which specializes in estate planning and special needs planning. They can be reached at 912-352-3999 or richard@smithbarid.com or msmith@smithbarid.com.