By Josh Sharp
I have heard about VA benefits that I can qualify for, but what happens if my spouse needs help?
We have clients that come into our office who are veterans, but are leading a normal, healthy life. Unfortunately their spouse is in need of costly home health care and they don’t know how they are going to pay for it. Luckily, if you qualify, there is a program for veterans that give them money each month that can be used to pay for home healthcare for their spouse. This program is known as the Improved Disability Pension. If you are a veteran who has health expenses for your spouse, and could use up to $1,291 a month for home health costs, contact our office to find out about the details of this VA program.
For further information please contact our office at 1-800-798-5297.
By Attorney Dan Vu
On receiving my certificate to practice before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, I was reminded of the one thing I enjoyed most about my job. That would be informing Veterans about the VA benefit of Aid and Attendance. This is a program managed by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs that helps Veterans pay for healthcare services. This includes assisted living facilities, nursing homes, or home health care services from a third party or even a relative. This is an excellent program that assists Veterans with their large health care bills. The benefit will also help a Veteran stay at home longer, something a majority of clients would like.
The only major flaw to the program is that few Veterans’ know about the program. So when I meet a Veteran who has served his country in the most perilous of times, and I get to explain a way for them to receive help on their extraordinary monthly medical costs, it always puts a smile to my face and to theirs. The VA benefit may not cover all of their costs, but with a maximum benefit of $1,949 a month for a married Veteran, this benefit can lift a large burden off the Veteran and the Veteran’s family. Moreover, I get to surprise many more when I explain to them that the surviving spouse of a Veteran could also qualify for up to a maximum benefit of $1050 a month.
As with almost any benefit, there are qualification requirements. For VA Aid & Attendance, a Veteran must meet three requirements. The first is that the Veteran served during wartime. The second is a health requirement: the Veteran or surviving spouse must need the aid & attendance of another. The third is an asset and income requirement: the Veteran or surviving spouse must prove that they cannot sustain the current cost of care for their lifetime. This third requirement is easier said then done. A complex array of rules applies to the determination of who qualifies under this requirement. This is something I help Veterans with as well.
So perhaps the only thing better than explaining the benefit to unaware Veterans, is helping them wade through this process of qualifying them for the benefit. For more information, contact our office for a free CD or schedule to meet with an Attorney, like myself, certified to practice before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
By Attorney Thom Cooper
Our law office is involved extensively in obtaining veterans benefits for veterans and their widows. Therefore I thought it might be appropriate to reflect on the costs of wars in terms of the number of deaths of our veterans. Many people think that the most costly war for Americans was World War II or the Vietnam War. They are wrong. The most costly war, in terms of deaths, was the American Civil War with over 625,000 American deaths. By comparison the Civil War was 10 times more costly in terms of American lives than the Vietnam War. What is even more impressive is if you look at these deaths as a function of the population of the U.S at the time of the specific war. Looking at it this way would make the Civil War more than 50 times more costly than the Vietnam War. I will certainly remember this as our Family visits the Gettysburg battlefield next week on our vacation.
I have put together the table below for you review.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_casualties_of_war
By Josh Sharp
After my grandpa passed away I was looking for something that would help me remember him. I came across the Presidential Memorial Certificate on the Veterans Administration website. The Presidential Memorial Certificate was created by President Kennedy in 1962. It is an engraved certificate that is signed by the President of the United States that is serving when the certificate is requested. Unlike many VA programs this certificate is fairly easy to apply for. All one needs is a to fill out a form and mail it to the VA with a copy of the veteran’s discharge papers and death certificate. I still miss my grandpa, but it is going to be nice to have something that memorializes the service that he provided to our country during World War II. If you would like the form to request a certificate, please contact our office. Not only can we provide the form to you, but we can also explore other VA Benefits that you or a Veteran you know may qualify to receive.
by Attorney Mitch Adel
For years our office has been assisting Veterans and their widows qualify for benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs to help pay for high costs associated with their long term care, including nursing homes, assisted living and home health care. During that time we have always told clients that 8-10 months is the average time it takes to be approved for benefits (but the VA will pay retroactive from the date of application). This delay often confuses clients.
For years, I have explained that, in my opinion, the reason for the delay is that as more information about this benefit becomes available, more Veterans and widows are applying for the benefit. The more applications, the more time the VA has to invest in weeding through both the claims that will be approved and those that will not. It was recently reported that the VA receives more than 97,000 VA disability claims each month.
Last month the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs conducted a hearing to examine the problem of so many disability claims. Presenter Michael Wacloff stated “we expect the number of compensation and pension claims received to increase from 1,013,712 in 2009 to 1,318,753 in 2011 (a 30 percent increase).” Please review the following website to review additional testimony from the hearing. http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?newsid=595.
Finally, remember that you must coordinate the benefits you receive from VA with other government benefits you may later want or need. Our office has four attorneys who are accredited by the VA to work with veterans and their widows.
By Attorney Mitch Adel
For years, Federal law has protected Federal benefits such as Social Security and Veterans’ Benefits, from being seized from bank accounts by creditors, with a few minor exceptions, such as child support, alimony or unpaid federal taxes.
Recently, however, due to the vague nature of such laws, creditors have found a way to force banks to freeze individual bank accounts where monies are directly deposited by programs such as the Veterans Administration. The unfortunate reality is that most recipients of these benefits rely on these deposits to pay monthly expenses. Freezing these accounts will result in many Veterans losing their VA benefits and creating an undue hardship.
In April, 2010, President Obama proposed new rules to close these loopholes and in recent days the Ohio Attorney General, Richard Cordray, has backed the proposal to protect these monies for the people who need them the most. If you would like to comment on this proposal please visit this site:
http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/ProposedGarnishmentRule
For full details as to the potential problems and proposed changes please review:
Seattle Times – Creditors Use Loophole to Sieze Protected Benefits
By Jim Zifer
For ten years I traveled the state of Ohio and every Thursday I made sure I was in Dover, Ohio. The reason: spaghetti day. I had lunch with my Grandma Zifer every Thursday for 10 years. Her family tradition, along with most of the Italians in town, was to make their sauce and meatballs on Thursdays. That’s about 1500 meatballs in 10 years that I consumed! But more importantly, I spent the time with my Grandmother. I learned her recipes, I heard her stories (over and over again), and I made sure she was doing ok. She lived alone, and although she would never admit it, she needed help.
My grandfather was a World War II Veteran. What I didn’t know at that time, was that my grandmother would have qualified for $1056 each month as she was a widow of a veteran. And that money didn’t have to be used towards a nursing home. It just needed to be used for her care. My sisters and I could have created a contract with our Grandma to take care of her.
There are many families just like ours: mom, dad, grandma or grandpa need daily assistance but don’t need to be in a nursing facility. And more importantly, they want to be taken care of their family, not a stranger. There are many benefits out there for Veterans or Widows of Veterans. You can find additional information on these benefits here on the website, or give our office a call.
My Grandma Zifer died in 1996. I learned her recipe for the sauce, and although I don’t make it every Thursday, I do make it when my kids are in town; hoping that one day they too will have ‘spaghetti day’.
By Julian Guilfoyle
Anyone familiar with Medicaid should not be surprised that the fastest growing segment of the program is nursing home coverage. Today’s seniors are living longer, healthier lives that inevitably result in having to pay higher costs of care. Seniors who face catastrophic health events or experience long lasting illnesses such as dementia or Alzheimer’s are running out of money to privately pay for their care. The state of Ohio and the federal government chip in only when the assets seniors have accumulated over their lives are exhausted. Seniors who had any plans to pass along their amassed assets to their families are instead leaving their wealth to nursing homes. There is an alternative to this ending; seniors who plan ahead with experienced elder law attorneys can retire and live out their golden years with respect, dignity, and the assets they have worked so hard and so long to obtain.
When Senior Partner Mitch Adel talks about Veterans Benefits in one of his weekly seminars, he has an outstanding line that has always stuck with me. He says that the main reason many veterans are denied the Aid and Attendance benefit they earned is because they ask the wrong question. Veterans call the VA to ask if they qualify for the program instead of asking how to qualify for the program. Many seniors make the same mistake when they ask about Medicaid. Unless or until the senior is impoverished they will not qualify for assistance in paying for their care. However, with careful planning, the senior can protect their assets and qualify for Medicaid sooner and with significant portions of their wealth.
There are some who feel this approach is unethical. They believe that the estates of seniors should be reduced to nothing before the government provides them with any assistance. The Ohio Speaker of the House of Representatives, Armond Budish, disagrees. In a June 4, 2010 article Cleveland.com, Budish stated “It puts a greater burden on the government, but there is nothing wrong with doing it because the law allows it.” He says that Congress recognized that people shouldn’t lose their savings before being covered by Medicaid and that’s why it created the option to move assets. “People should be able to avail themselves of the protections that Congress has set up.”
In the final analysis, it is entirely in the hands of seniors as to how and to what degree they plan for the future. Those who believe they owe the government everything they have to qualify for Medicaid certainly are entitled to that belief. If, however, you believe that you have contributed your fair share and would like to protect your assets, then maybe its about time you came in for a free consultation.
By Josh Sharp
“I think that I might qualify for Veterans Benefits, but I don’t have my original discharge paperwork.”
The truth is that in order to qualify for some of the programs that the VA offers, you are required to submit original discharge papers, or a certified copy of them. What does this mean if you stuck them in a drawer thirty years ago and have since lost track of them?
One option is to check the county recorder’s office for the county the veteran resided in immediately after he or she was discharged. Soldiers were encouraged to record their discharge papers after returning from the war.
If this option does not work, you should contact our office. We request replacement discharge papers from the Military Personnel Records Center for many of our clients.
Veterans have earned far more than we can give them, and the fact that discharge papers have been misplaced should not keep them from gaining benefits that they have earned with their service.
This week I have already met with more than a handful of clients and while the complexities of their cases are different, they have consistently asked the same question: ”how will the new health care bill affect our situation”. To most Americans, since nothing has been finalized, the answers are still unknown, but the Department of Veterans Affairs has weighed in on the matter, explaining that regardless of the pending health care reform, TRICARE will remain unchanged. Please visit the following website and check out the attached article to see the comments of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
http://www.military.com/news/article/officials-reassure-troops-on-tricare.html?col=1186032310810
I have heard about VA benefits that I can qualify for, but what happens if my spouse needs help?
