EP:213 Straight to the Point - Preparing Your Loved Ones

Dr. Paul Lawrence and Tyler highlight the critical, yet often neglected, practice of veterans discussing their benefits with their loved ones. Paul sheds light on the emotional and financial chaos that can befall a family when a veteran's passing leaves them uninformed and vulnerable, emphasizing the need for open communication to prevent such a crisis on this episode of Straight to the Point.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Straight to the Point podcast, where your host, dr Paul Lawrence and Dr Tyler Piran will take a condensed look into some of the pressing commonly asked questions from within our veteran community. Join Paul and Tyler as they get straight to the point to bring clarity and a better understanding to intriguing topics. Now here are your hosts, Dr Paul Lawrence and Dr Tyler Piran.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Welcome to Coming Home Well, straight to the Point. As always, we have Dr Paul Lawrence, the former Undersecretary for Benefits at the Veterans Affairs. Paul is an accomplished author. He's done so many things. And go check out the book, paul. Thank you so much for joining us on Coming Home Well, straight to the Point. We talk a lot about benefits. We talk a lot about all the things people should know. What should people know and what should they share with their families?

Speaker 3: 0:58

Yeah, let's talk about a best practice. So that's exactly it the importance of sharing your benefit situation with your family. And probably the best way to demonstrate why this is other than just the obvious intuition is to kind of give you an example, and this is actually based on something I encountered, unfortunately, pretty regularly back in the day when I was in office. Let's talk about a veteran and, given how age is and it's going to be, a male veteran who's married to a wife and in this scenario he does not share that. He is 80% service connected, which means that into their bank account every month goes about $2,100. Let's call it $2,000. And it forms a part of their budget. And he probably says something like oh, I get some money from the government, I served in the military. And she goes that's fine, high five to you. Great, that's great. And that's how the $2,000 is really valuable.

Speaker 3: 1:52

Now, unfortunately, life being what it is, the veteran passes right, the veteran dies and now the wife is grieving. So difficult situation and because disability compensation is a function of the veteran, not the spouse, that $2,000 a month stops. So now spouse has a hold on the budget, grieving from loss of spouse, I'm out $2,000. Not knowing that somehow connected to the VA. Eventually she figures out.

Speaker 3: 2:24

I got to go deal with the VA, right, big bureaucracy, as we all know. She has to learn. What is this, what are benefits, what was my husband doing and what does this mean for me? So a whole big discovery moment, which is most of my book, right, you have to do while under grief, loss of life, the whole sort of thing and sadly, what often happens at this moment I think we've talked about this before Tyler is for profit agents show up and say, oh, I can help you with all this for $750, $1,000, I can make some sense out of this for you when of course, she should be able to get no cost help. So the end of the story on this one is this scenario hasn't told the spouse about it? The wife big hole in the budget, big shock. Pension poachers are now showing up, swarming, creating more grief and stress and frustration.

Speaker 3: 3:22

So this is one example of what can happen when you don't share your benefits.

Speaker 2: 3:25

So if they don't share, the bigger concern is that the check continues for four, six, eight months and then the VA gets notified that the veteran has passed and now they want their money back because you weren't entitled to it. So, at $2,000 a month for six months, all of a sudden, hey, you owe the government 12 grand, Right? So it's even worse.

Speaker 3: 3:47

It's even worse. Right In fact, there's a famous pit of testimony where a person that happened to and it was a woman began crying. She goes I've been in this country 70 years. I get a debtor letter. I'm not a debtor, what do you mean? I'm down. So it's all really bad.

Speaker 3: 4:05

Now let's take the same scenario and now kind of envision it, with a person who shared with their spouse, their wife, their information. The right way to do it, so imagine what they did was hey, I get this $2,000 a month disability compensation. Let me explain to you what that is. Let me show you the letter that rendered this decision. Let me show you the box that has all my information, my DD 214, my medical record, so you can see kind of what has happened to me that led me to this point. And now, knowing that they say well, you know, disability compensation would stop if something were to happen to me. So we will have a hole in our budget because even if you get some additional benefit, it won't be the same. So let's purchase some insurance to make up for the lost income if this should happen. So, the wisely, go ahead and get insurance.

Speaker 3: 5:02

Same scenario husband passes. So the wife is grieving, naturally, but now she knows the situation. Oh, my husband introduced me to the service officer at the American Legion who did all this for it. I've already talked to him about this and he finds out the husband has passed, calls her up and says you know, remember what we said I'm going to help you apply for DIC, dependency and dignity compensation or a survivor's pension or something that helps you get there, right? Oh, by the way, you don't have a hole in your budget because now your insurance payments are coming. Maybe you get a little more from the VA, based on the situation for your husband. And when the pension poacher shows up and goes, blah, blah, blah, she goes. No thanks, I've got this all figured out. I'm getting no cost help from a service officer who my husband introduced me to and has been taking care of us all. That you know. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 5:57

And it's mostly because they're they're these pension poachers. They look at who passes, who has benefits, they get that information and they're proactive, unlike the VA. A lot of times you know where somebody's going to reach out and say oh, this is, this is a prime opportunity to make some money.

Speaker 3: 6:15

Right, and then contrast the situations right scenario, number, stress, frustration, you know, just disappointment probably. The other one is like, okay, yeah, there's frustration, you know, obviously we'll also love one, but it's like, hey, we had this all figured out. We had this all figured out, and so, you know, you think about it. Nobody likes to do end of life planning. It's just our nature, okay, but it's almost I describe it as selfish if you don't, because you kind of dump it on the folks you you know you love and care for. To kind of go figure this one out and, as you know, we talked about it repeatedly now for a couple of years benefits is a real hard thing to figure out. You don't want to deal with it under stress. So my, my solid best practice is tell your family, you can extrapolate this example to kids. You know one benefit could very well be, you know, education being paid for. You can extrapolate this in a whole bunch of different ways. And you see, you know, while it will be tedious to do, the importance of doing it.

Speaker 2: 7:13

So, not only letting them know, but sort of have a book, or or you know, hey, here's all the documents you're going to need, right, something you know. Maybe it'll never happen, but just in case, here's what I'm entitled to, here's all the documents, here's all the reference points. And here is the point of contact to reach out and said, hey, my husband has passed away. What do I do next? Even if you don't know what next is, those VSOs are so incredibly important because some of the things like burial benefits, right, you know, you got to do that.

Speaker 2: 7:45

If you want to be buried in a service, a veteran cemetery or any of the other things, even if you get buried in a private cemetery, there's benefits available. So having that book or that information or that cash of information available is very important. So these family members this is a best practice. What is the real takeaway? If you're the veteran and you have benefits and you have people in your life that are depending on you for some of that or part of that income, what should they really take?

Speaker 3: 8:18

away. Yeah, do two things Explain to your family what this is, to have a set of information so that they can, that they can look at. So when someone says, when you apply for benefits because he's passed, say oh, what was your husband's situation, you go. Well, as a matter of fact, I have the letter, I have his documents, I have it all right here. I can answer any question you're going to ask me. So we can continue on in the process.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Now I'm not going to plug your book, but the book definitely goes into a lot of detail about all the types of benefits that people are entitled to, including DIC, the dependent indemnity compensation, which is for the people of the family members are left behind the parents, sometimes children, spouses. There's a lot of caveats to that. It's sort of complicated but you have to know about it to ask for it. And then there's also if the veteran passes away due to service connection, there's another component. So make sure you understand what benefits that your family are entitled to and that they know all the documents and all the resources, because they are not going to know the lingo like you do as a veteran, because you've been dealing with a VA, you've been doing all the stuff, you know the VSOs, you know all these things that your family members don't if you don't tell them and if you don't tell them what to look for and what matters and what does.

Speaker 3: 9:41

Yeah, no, great plug for my book. And also there's an appendix that has all the information about the VSOs where how to contact and also the states right, because state department of veteran services or affairs also have service officers. All that information is in an appendix to make the connections easier.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Absolutely, Paul. Thank you so much for joining us on straight to the point. I think we have hit the the keynote, which is let your family know about your benefits and all the documents that they're going to need. Obviously, we should also plug go get that will and all the end of life things. There's a lot of organizations that'll help you. Go do that. Maybe we'll cover that in another show. But go do the basics of letting your family know what benefits you have, so at least they know what to expect when you're not here, because, yeah, a lot $2,000 a month or whatever you have in disability. That's a big check and it's going to not stop right away. The family members have to let the VA know. They'll find out eventually, but they're going to want their money back.

Speaker 3: 10:44

Yeah, no great point. Good summary, Thanks Tyler.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Thanks for joining us on straight to the point with Dr Paul Lawrence and Dr Tyler Piran. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review. Want to keep up with Dr Lawrence? Connect with him on LinkedIn.