Navarro County Veteran Service Officer
and National Guard veteran Tim Easley
An Army Vietnam veteran’s surviving spouse was recently awarded over $308,000 in retro payments ultimately dating back to 2002. It was a long journey of filing claims, denials, appeals and locating medical records. Helping her successfully through this process was Navarro County Veteran Service Officer and National Guard veteran Tim Easley.
Easley related that it all began with the veteran filing a claim for Diabetes in 2001 and being awarded a 10% disability compensation rating in February 2002. He passed away in March 2002 due to a heart attack with hypertension being a contributing factor. His hypertension developed during his service in the National Guard.
In July 2002, his spouse filed for survivor benefits and was denied in November. “It was reopened because of a duty to assist error but denied again in February 2003,” said Easley.
The spouse appealed in 2003 and the VA Board of Veteran’s Appeals (BVA) denied it in June 2006.
“The surviving spouse came to see me in 2018 but had no new evidence to reopen. I asked her to get ER and hospital records,” said Easley.
It was July 2021 when she came back to Easley to see about reopening the claim. The VA did not have the veteran’s medical Service Treatment Records (STRs) so Easley submitted the documents along with a VA form requesting a faster decision be made. Though the VA generated a letter in October 2021 requesting a statement regarding the veteran’s death, it was either not received or overlooked by the surviving spouse and did not come to Easley’s attention.
“The claim was stuck open in the VA system,” said Easley. “After the PACT Act passed (August 2022), I was reviewing cases and remembered her case and reached out to tell her we needed to refile.”
In May 2023, her claim was resubmitted and she was awarded Dependent Indemnity Compensation. “Her initial award was burial $2,000 and back pay of over $12,500 to January 2023.
The law from 2002 to 2023 allowed either the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) or Dependent Indemnity Compensation, but not both. SBP provides a monthly payment of up to 55 percent of a service member’s retired pay to an eligible beneficiary. Dependent Indemnity Compensation offers a different monthly payment, with a set start rate at over $1,650, to which more payment may be added pending conditions such as one’s disability, dependents, etc.
“I reached out to the VA about the back pay since she would have had the choice of receiving SBP or VA Dependent Indemnity Compensation in 2002,” said Easley.
The VA issued a Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) audit to determine back pay. “This request was killed in the system on two occasions,” said Easley. “I contacted the VA coach who had been assigned the claim each time and she reopened it. Finally, after the third request, back pay to June 2008 was awarded in the amount of $219,038 and an additional amount of $74,510 was awarded back to April 2002. A total of 308,049.00 was awarded to this deserving spouse.”
