… The ad by Government Benefits Analysts Inc. headlined with a large attention banner, explains that many veterans or widows of veterans are eligible for benefits of “up to $20,924 a year tax-free!†The ad then asks veterans to call a local phone number, where a recording asks the caller to leave a message.
The ad was placed in The Daily News by Charles Whitehurst Jr., a Jacksonville insurance agent who works for Blue Water Insurance in Wilmington….
What Whitehurst is doing is legal. But Amelia Grissett, Onslow County’s veteran services director, said veterans with questions about benefits are better off coming to her office… Full Article Here:
An interesting news item. I’ve been studying VA benefits for years now, since I’ve been eligible for some VA benefits for nearly 40 years. I’ve never heard of the benefit highlighted. Does this tell you something about the state of the average vet’s knowledge? I think so.
It also seems to say a lot about the ability of the services and the VA to actually inform veterans of program which are available. In my opinion, based on personal experience, the VA is one of the worst government agencies for educating the citizens they are chartered and funded to serve. Sad.
In my own experience the VA actively cheated me out of a portion of my educational benefits due to an error on their part which they readily admitted (after I researched and pointed out to them) but refused to make good on the unpaid allowance. I’ve seen incidents like this thousands of times with fellow vets.
Contrast, for example, with the much maligned Internal Revenue Service. Twice in recent memory I made errors on my tax forms which resulted in overpayment of taxes. The IRS checked the forms, sent me a letter to point out the errors and even corrected the error and sent me a refund of the excess. What a difference in performance between two similar agencies.
The thrust of the highlighted news article is the debate over a commercial insurance company using the lure of possible pension benefits to draw in potential clients who may or may not also become customers for the company’s commercial offerings. I can see the potential for abuse, but even though I don’t know the efficiency of the county VA assistance officers who are complaining I hesitate in criticizing the insurance company for making the effort. In general the sate of education of our veterans (and, be default the state of education of divorcing veterans and non-veteran spouses and their attorneys) is woeful.
So why is this article here today?
- If you are a potential retiree (most of us are), make a special effort to learn what all your possible VA benefits may be. Don’t take the perfunctory briefings you may have received upon separation from the service as the whole truth.
- If you’re the attorney for a veteran, or a veteran’s spouse, make darn sure you do your due diligence. You wouldn’t want to come back to court someday when the other side claims you missed a $20K per year pension in doing the property division validation, would you?
- Strongly consider joining and actively participating in a veteran’s organization such as the American legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Sad to say the US government (especially after nearly 16 years of draft dodger’s in the White House) is doing all they can to see that past and current veterans get nothing unless they can dig through the mass of laws and fend for themselves.
