Widow benefits become complicated after Congressional intervention

Many of the nation's war widows are finding it not only confusing, but disrespectful to their past military husbands that to be able to fully collect on the insurance that their husbands purchased for them when they were alive, they must marry another man.

Additionally, in order to qualify for insurance, the widows are required to remarry when they are 57 or older. Those widows who remarry earlier are ineligible.

The core of the issue stems from a government policy known as the "widows' tax." The policy states that a military spouse whose loved one dies from a service-related cause is not eligible to collect both survivor's benefits and the full annuity benefits from insurance the couple bought from the Defense Department at retirement. Rather, the amount of the annuity payment is reduced by the amount of the monthly survivor benefit.

Members of Congress have agreed to help the 55,000 affected widows multiple times in the past, but certain laws that have been enacted have only created a more complicated system that has resulted in more confusion.

What does remarriage have anything to do with it? As it turns out - very little. The marriage condition was slipped into the law by Congress with the idea that it would help the survivors retain certain benefits if they remarried later on. Because Congress has failed to come up with the money to help all the widows, insurance money has been limited to that group.

"I've never even wanted to date, much less remarry," said widow of a military husband who past away in 2002. "I already married the love of my life. Why would you bring that as a factor?"

Compounding the confusion and angst is yet another stipulation that segregates even more of those who should benefit from the system - women under the age of 57 who have found love a second time and remarried.

For widows who were denied the complete insurance benefits, the government lend a hand by giving them back the premiums their spouses had paid for the policies. However if a widow remarries at the age 57 or older, making themselves eligible for the benefit, she is only able to receive money by repaying the premiums that the government had refunded to her.

A 76 year old widow whose late husband served in the Vietnam War and past away due to a service-induced disability after over 30 years in the Air Force, said she was stunned after remarrying last year to receive a bill from the government to repay over $41,000 in premiums. Those insurance premiums had been refunded to her after his death in 2003 because at that time she unable to receive the annuity's full benefit.

"It doesn't seem to make much sense," said a Knoxville estate planning lawyer who is helping widows find a solution to the issue.

It also doesn't make sense to 11 Senators of Congress who last week filed legislation to aid the distressed widows.

"This has always been an issue of the military doing the right thing and living up to its promises," one of the senators said in a statement. "These policies were bought by servicemen and women to make sure their loved ones would be taken care of following their deaths. Not only is it a promise the government hasn't kept, but now it's sending bills to survivors. That's just outrageous."

Approximately 700 of the widows who have remarried after age 57 are considered to be the lucky ones because they do not have to deal with one benefit being subtracted from another.

Many spouses, for the past few years, have taken the battle to Capitol Hill.

A congressionally aimed group of military widows was established to support legislation efforts by the senators that would eliminate the benefit offset and not demand widows to repay premiums previously refunded. Their argument is that the affected war widows have spent many years living without the benefits and it is less expensive for the feds to forgo the insurance premiums than manually calculate the amounts owed.

The largest issue in dealing with the concern is to eliminate the offset of the benefits. This would imply an expense to the government of about $6.7 billion over the course of a decade to allow the spouses to collect both benefits in full.

The Defense Department has long claimed that never was there expectations of both programs being provided at the same time. Last year, the defense undersecretary for personnel told Congress that scrapping the offset would result in inequities in overall benefits programs.

The affected war widows did not agree. Most of the spouses paid roughly 6.5 percent of their retirement pay - or the equivalent of about $100 a month or more - for the annuity. The service members past away with the thought that their spouses would benefit from it, the widows claim, similar to the effect of a private life insurance policy. They reinforce the fact that benefits would be reduced if the husband died from a service-related cause and the widow was receiving survivor benefits was never explained to them.

It was completely unexpected said the chair of government relations at the group that supports military widows. Many widows are seeking their local top attorneys for legal help.

An effort to get rid of the offset has passed in the Senate only to be dropped when officials of the House and Senate met in private to hash out spending.

Instead, Congress has given the spouses minuscule legislative victories that only appear to have created inequities in the system, said a retired military colonel who is a director of a government relations association.

Among the "victories" was the 57-and-older remarriage rule, which in the beginning the Defense Department failed to recognize. Three of the widows later successfully sued, and as a result, in 2009 the Defense Department issued new guidance claiming those war widows 57 and older who remarry would not be subjected to the offset.

During the court ruling, even the federal appellate judge questioned what Congress was thinking in its effort to only help such a small fraction of the widows.

A Harrisburg estate planning lawyer helped to reinforce his opinion with a compelling argument: The government's intervention has only perplexed the situation, leading to confused widows who are feeling victimized.

Another small win on Capitol Hill gave the widows affected by the offset a taxable $50 a month starting in 2010. Instead of making the widows happy, however, many felt Congress was acknowledging that they'd been wronged but wasn't ponying up the money to fix the problem properly.

An individual who chairs a House subcommittee with control over military personnel issues said that for many of the survivors, eliminating the offset would mean the difference between scraping by and having a middle-class lifestyle. GOP House members have vowed to slash government spending, but the person said that even in tight times, taking care of survivors is important.