Military Update: Military widows win right to sue for survivor pay

[unhappycamper]

Military Update: Military widows win right to sue for survivor pay
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, February 16, 2008

A U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge has given a green light to three military widows to sue the government for a combined $105,000 — the accumulated value of Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) payments that, the widows contend, have been unlawfully withheld since Dec. 16, 2003.

In a 24-page opinion denying the government’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge George W. Miller found that both the facts and the law favor the widows, and counter every legal argument raised by government attorneys.

If they win their case, hundreds of surviving spouses in the same category could be in line for hefty SBP repayments, too. That category is precise: surviving spouses who remarried at 57 or older and who have had their SBP cut or wiped out by their decision to accept Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The lawsuit challenges how the Department of Defense has interpreted a provision of the Veterans Benefits Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-183). The widows argue that Congress intended for them to be among the first small group of surviving military spouses deemed eligible for “concurrent receipt” of both SBP and DIC. In other words, they were to be the first of 44,000 dual-eligible widows to be exempt from the so-called SBP-DIC offset.

Under SBP, servicemembers nearing retirement elect to pay a monthly premium so that, in case of their death, their surviving spouse or a dependent child continues to receive up to 55 percent of their annuity.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52514

[aldo]

1. When are our fighting men and women going to see the truth?

Their officers and the government see them as disposable garbage. What kind of officer corps exposes their own troops to depleted uranium munitions (to say nothing of enemy civilians)? Substandard VA treatment. Kissinger: our troops are "dumb, stupid cattle" -- quoted by Woodward. Can we say treason?