Fox2 10/28/2019
In early March 2006, two days after learning her husband had died in Iraq, Malia Fry was sitting at her kitchen table in North Carolina. She was flipping through a three-ring binder with a casualty assistance officer who was shepherding her through the long list of decisions she had to make in the fog of grief.
John Fry had been a woodworker. Malia chose a wood casket. And then the casualty assistance officer — a Marine staff sergeant who had worked with John Fry — flipped through the binder to the next decision Malia needed to make: how to structure her monthly survivor benefits.
She reviewed one from the Veterans Affairs Administration called Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, a benefit for family of service members who die in the line of duty or due to a service-related injury or illness. As the name implies, it compensates dependents for the loss of income of their fallen military member and renders the federal government not liable for the deaths of US troops.
There was also the Survivor Benefit Plan, paid out by the Department of Defense. It’s the military’s version of a life insurance policy. Whether the military member is killed in action or they retire and continue to pay into the benefit, the SBP guarantees part of their retirement pay as a modest monthly income for a spouse who may outlive them.
“One he paid for with his work every day and the other he paid for with blood,†Malia, who was 28 when her husband died, says.
She was stunned when she learned she would not receive both benefits in full.
For every dollar she received from the VA benefit, her casualty assistance officer told her, it would be deducted from the Survivor Benefit Plan payments, an offset referred to as “the widow’s tax.â€
More:
https://fox2now.com/2019/10/28/for-gold-star-families-the-ultimate-sacrifice-comes-heavily-taxed/
