Veterans Affairs policy altered after Vets falsely declared dead

Matt Pierce
March 11, 2016

The federal government has recently accepted that they make a mistake when they made the false declaration of around 100 dead veterans. Their benefits were also withheld and now this policy of declaring veterans dead is set to get altered.

Veterans Affairs policy changed:

Also Read: 3 Reasons Certain Federal Employees Can Retire Years Earlier Than Their Peers Without Penalties
Also Read: CSRS Retirement in 2024: Are You Making the Most of What This Classic Plan Has to Offer?
Also Read: Roth IRA Basics for Beginners: What’s There to Learn?

A 69 year old Navy veteran, Mike Rieker was one of the people who were falsely considered and announced dead expressed his concerns about how his situation got a lot worse when he heard that his benefits are going to be taken away from him too. He said that he called many offices many times and argued with a lady for over 5 minutes about his death. He had a shy smile on his face when he further added that he had to sell stuff from his house in order to make some payments.

It was David Jolly who is a Republican representative who highlighted the issue and told the Department of Veterans Affairs about it through a letter. This was when the VA realized that they had wrongly stopped giving around 115 people their deserved benefits just because some people thought that they were dead.

This has led the VA to make some seriously sought after changes and are now going to have to update their process to retrieve a lot more information before just going ahead and declaring someone dead to stop the payments. The process is now simple and this: Whenever a veteran is sought to be dead, a letter will be sent to their address to confirm that they have actually died. This was indicated in a letter that was sent to Jolly from the VA on December 10^th. This will completely remove the possibility of false termination of benefits as well.

This was certainly something that required attention and it appears as if it has got the kind it needed.