Military Widows "Tax"

It wasn't a loophole. What these widows had was insurance policies and no way to collect on them. The policies were in effect cancelled on the death of the soldier with no benefits payable to a widow even if the policies were paid for 20 years. At least that's my understanding from the Gold Star Wives.

I am getting VA benefits. The Gold Star Wives are fighting for the insurance thingy. I was sent information but there were a lot of details left out. We get Champus/VA for instance which I was suposed to be eligible for when my late husband was rated 100%. It took 20 mths to get approved. He had already died by then. He was told (mistakenly) that I wasn't eligible for PX or commissary privleges but later when I was told to apply I was told that too was wrong.

The worst part is that even though the VA had the original documentation of his death (he died in a VA hospital) they always wanted me to produce a death certificate. No one can know how hard that is for a widow to constantly pull out that totally final documentation of her most loved husband's death. But that is what we have to do.

I'm not trying to get anything. I just wanted to point out that a Veteran's widow won't get the annuity from the life insurance policy. All we get is the Widow's pension.

Ok say you work for a company and you buy a life insurance policy through your employer but when you die your beneficiaries don't get to collect on the policy the company does even though you paid for it. All you get is the pension. There'd by major lawsuits against the employers that tried that tactic.

That's the twist the gov't has put on this deal. military personnel pay the premiums and the gov't doesn't have to pay the benefits or more commonly known as annuities. They say you get the VA pension so you don't need the annuity. Duh why pay for life insurance and then there is no benefit to survivors

they don't tell military personnel that when they sell them the policies: You can only collect on them if you don't have a l00% service related cause of death because your beneficiary doesn't get a VA pension.

In effect what they are doing is your widow/survivors gets this if you don't die of service related causes but if you do, they don't.

Their justification is that the survivor is getting a VA pension. Which by the way the military vet was getting without dying.

It's a Catch22. It's their way of "taxing" the widows to pay for the Widow's pensions. They take all the money that's spent on the insurance and use it to fund the Widow's pensions. That's what I understood anyway.

Oh by the way Champus/VA is the health insurance that they give the widows and it's not very good insurance. We're suppose to be able one day sooner or later to get health care at the VA hospitals/clinics but when you check on it you find out that all are closed or you have to drive couple hours to get to one that's supposedly opened.

I am getting VA benefits after I provided his death certificate.