On this website, you’ll find out how this little-known VA program for veterans and their families can help you with long term care costs. You’ll discover:

1. How this unique program can make it possible to get the care you need at home or in assisted living rather than a nursing home.
2. Ways you can pay a relative or friend to care for you and even use those payments to increase the amount you receive from the VA.
3. That you can become eligible for the full monthly benefit amount even if the VA would tell you that you’re ineligible today.
4. Why every month you wait to claim your benefit check will cost you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars each and every month.

Veterans Can Face the Long Term Care Crisis Without Worry

Every senior, regardless of current health, worries about this potential crisis . . . with good reason.
When the cost of care begins to wipe out a lifetime of savings and destroys equity in the family home, the situation can become intolerable.
But now veteran families have genuine choices. The improvements in quality of life can be nothing short of spectacular.

Your monthly check from the VA can make it possible to keep the family home, so it won’t have to be sold to pay for care costs. It can be used to pay for care in your home, enable you to afford a private room in an assisted living facility, protect an inheritance for a special needs child, and many, many other purposes.

Who Can Benefit From This Program?

Generally, veterans age 65 and older who are facing significant out-of-pocket medical and long-term care costs benefit the most.
A widowed spouse can also receive benefits, but must have been married to the veteran for at least one year OR have had children by the veteran if marries less than one year. The widow must never have remarried.

The widowed spouse must have been living with the veteran at the time the veteran died, unless the separation was due to medical or military reasons. There may be some exceptions related to separations caused by abuse.

Minor children and disabled adult children may qualify for limited benefits on their own.

Why This Benefit is Different from Other Government Programs

This VA program – officially called Improved Pension (a very misleading name, by the way!) – differs from Medicaid and other similar long-term care programs in many ways.

Pension has its own set of extremely complex eligibility rules. Only some of these rules are found in the law and the VA’s regulations. Many are unwritten and are found only in the VA’s practices. So they are known only by those who regularly work with the VA.

For example, most doctors have no idea that the VA looks for certain wording in physician’s statements when evaluating a veteran’s medical condition. An experienced VA-accredited lawyer can guide the physician in preparation of medical documents required to prove the veteran’s medical needs. This can make the difference between being denied benefits or having benefit payments delayed months or even years.

Pension is also available to the surviving spouse of a deceased veteran, even if the veteran never claimed the benfit while alive! A Pension benefit can also be claimed by a dependent or disabled adult child of a veteran.

To be eligible for Pension, a veteran must meet certain non-financial eligibility rules:

1. The veteran must have served at least 90 days of active duty.
2. At least 1 day of those 90 days must have been during a qualified war period. But the war-time service need not have been in a combat zone; any type of service is sufficient.
3. The veteran’s military discharge must have been other than “Dishonorable.”
4. The veteran, widowed spouse, or disabled child must obtain proper doctor’s statements that the claimant is in need of the assistance of another person – from an individual, an assisted living home, etc.

Why So Few Veteran Households Are Receiving Pension . . . and How Hundreds of Thousands of Families Could Quaify

Very few veteran families are receiving a monthly Pension check from the VA today – maybe only 5% – That’s 1 out of every 20 potentially eligible families.! That’s a shameful fact.

Here are a few of the reasons why the number is so low:

1. Many veterans aren’t aware of Pension because the VA does such a poor job of promoting the program.
2. VA does not adequately train its personnel in how to respond to veterans’ inquiries.
3. It’s likely that the VA is telling thousands of veterans that they don’t qualify when they could with some planning.

But these “VA system” roadblocks aren’t the only ones that stand in the way of veterans and the Pension they earned by their military service. There are others that are even more important to veterans reading this:

1. Local VA regional offices who deal with the public are telling callers that Pension is only available to veteran households with very low income. They’re turning away many potentially eligible applicants. They aren’t trained or permitted to deal with the special case of veterans with high income and high medical costs.
2. Veterans who have significant savings, investments or other property will be told by the VA that they don’t qualify. Naturally, the VA won’t mention the option of legal planning to address the issue of having assets valued above the VA maximum. In most cases, it’s possible to meet the VA’s “asset test” even if you own significant amounts of property today.

Here Are Some Examples of How VA Planning Works

If your income or assets are more than the VA will allow you to have and still qualify for Pension, it’s usually possible to rearrange your financial affairs in a way that will allow you to receive Pension benefits anyway. Here are a few simple examples:

86 Year Old World War II Veteran Gets $1,949 a Month, Keeps His Home, Pays His Son for Care

Bob and his unemployed son live together. Bob’s wife is in a nursing home and on Medicaid. Bob can no longer drive because his eyesight is failing.

He is worried he may have to sell his house because he can’t afford to travel to the nursing home to see his wife, or may need to pay for his own care.

Bob receives a small company pension and Social Security. Bob’s income is too great to qualify for a VA Pension now. So, Bob’s lawyer creates a written “caregiver agreement,” under which Bob’s son agrees to care for his father. Bob pays his son for the care.

The payments to Bob’s son reduce Bob’s income enough to earn Bob the maximum VA Pension of $1,949 a month. The extra money means Bob can remain at home, Bob’s son can care for his father and still have some income. The caregiver agreement is carefully customized to meet Bob’s particular circumstances and prepared in a way that will allow Bob to apply for Medicaid later, should he need it.

Widow of Korean War Veteran Helps Her Disabled Son by Increasing His Inheritance

Helen was using her social security, her husband’s pension and her savings account to pay for her assisted living. The bank account contained about $400,000, the money from the sale of her home.

Helen was withdrawing $900 per month to pay for her own care. Once she qualified for the VA widow’s benefit, she was able to stop drawing down on her savings. This gave her peace of mind because she was then able to conserve her savings for her son, who was disabled.

He was a middle-aged man with severe epilepsy. He constantly suffered from small seizures. Without his medications, he would suffer from grand mal seizures.

He was dependant on Medicaid to pay for his medications. So, if he inherited money outright from his mother, he would lose his Medicaid coverage.

Helen was concerned that her disabled son would not be able to handle any money he received from her outright. Helen set up a “VA asset protection trust,” a special type of trust, for her excess net worth, which then allowed her to receive VA benefits.

She also arranged that, at her death, any remaining money would flow directly into a special needs trust to benefit her disabled son. This money would be managed by her other son, whom she trusted to watch out for the best interests of his brother.

So now, at her death, Helen’s disabled son won’t lose his Medicaid drug coverage, and will not be given control of money that he probably doesn’t have the ability to manage.

How Free Help Can Cost You Thousands of Dollars

Jill, the widow of a Vietnam era veteran, had $1,500 per month in income, but only $500 per month in Medicare expenses because her daughter was providing all of her care. Without her daughter’s assistance, Jill would have had to move into an assisted living
facility.

The family insisted on going to the VA for help in preparing Jill’s claim for VA Pension because the help was free. The Veteran’s Service Officer at the VA submitted the application showing only $500 in unreimbursed medical expenses (the Medicare insurance costs).

After waiting 12 months, Jill received notice that she had been awarded a widow’s Pension. However, she was only awarded a Pension of $56 per month. Because her income, after deducting medical costs, was $1,000 a month, Jill could not receive the maximum Pension of $1,056 a month.

If Jill and her family had consulted with a knowledgeable VA-accredited attorney, they would have been advised that Jill should enter into a written “personal care agreement” with her daughter and pay her daughter a reasonable fee for the care she was receiving. The “free” help from the VA cost Jill a permanent loss of benefits of over $13,000!

Unfortunately, this financial disaster happens every day because people think they can do this themselves or that “free” help is good enough. “Free” is never free!

What Makes VA Pension Unique?

There are other government programs out there to help people with the staggering costs of long term care — mainly Medicaid. But, besides being limited to veteran families, there are other important features that make it uniquely suited to help veteran families:

1. Unlike “welfare-based” programs like Medicaid, VA Pension has been earned by the veteran through his military service to the nation. As Abraham Lincoln so beautifully put it, Pension is intended “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”
2. The benefit is paid in cash directly to the person who needs it, and not to a nursing home or other third party, so it can be applied in the most useful manner at the time it’s received.
3. Pension can used to to pay for in-home care or for assisted living. Medicaid in Georgia is limited to nursing home care.
4. The Pension eligibility rules allow the family to plan in advance and be sure of qualification.

When Is Advance VA Pension Planning Worthwhile?

Fortunately, it’s usually very easy to determine whether such planning is a good investment for you. Aside from the improved quality of life benefits, there is the financial impact on your life and the lives of your family. How much better off would you be with a government-guaranteed, tax-free $1,000 to $2,000 each and every month?

Let’s say you’re a married veteran receiving the maximum Pension of $23,388 each year. That’s the equivalent of having a bank CD worth more than $1.2 million!

In most cases, the cost of advance planning is recovered in the first 2-3 months of Pension payments. In nearly all cases, the costs of planning are earned back several times over in the first year of benefits. Over the years, your original decision to plan only increases in value.

What You Should Do Next

If you believe that you, a friend or loved one may need help qualifying for Pension, here are some things you can do right now:

Generally, we can tell you whether you’re potentially eligible in about 20 minutes on the phone. Give us a call at 880.505.2567 or 404.348.4263 between 9 AM and 2 PM weekdays, and tell the receptionist you want to know whether your’re eligible for VA Pension. The call is free and there’s no obligation.

This website has a wealth of information on eligibility for VA Pension, housebound and aid & attendance ratings, and much, much more.

Follow my blog. It can keep you up to date on new planning techniques, changes in the VA’s practices, as well as other VA-related news and developments. You can sign up to receive new posts by email, or follow it with an RSS feed.

Request a copy of my new book, “How Veterans’ Benefits Can Be Used to Pay the Costs of Long Term Care.” Look for the link above, on the right-hand side. Be sure to read the story of my father-in-law, Dan, and why I do this kind of work.

PS — Why you shouldn’t delay: This particular benefit isn’t retroactive. It’s paid starting for the month following the month in which you apply. For example, if you apply in November, your benefits are effective starting December 1st. Each month you delay applying is another month of benefits lost forever!