How to Qualify for Veterans Aid and Attendance Benefits

And welcome back everyone to Answers for Elders Radio Network. And we are here with Emily Schwarz, who is a vice president of marketing and sales for ElderLife Financial courtesy of MorningStar Senior Living. And we’re so excited to bring Emily on here because there’s so many financial resources for families that they may not know about. And Emily, I’m very interested in you touched on it earlier, but I would say probably 80% of people that have aging parents have no idea about what’s called Aid and Attendance benefits or VA benefits. They don’t understand that their loved one may qualify for a benefit from the military based on certain criteria. So Emily, I know you’re the expert. I’m gonna defer to you, So tell us a little bit about Aid and Attendance benefits and how do they qualify.

– Okay, Well, Aid and Attendance is a very exciting benefit for senior living. It can absolutely help you pay for your community of choice. It’s an additional income that comes to the veteran or their surviving spouse every month. It gets deposited into your checking account, just like every other pension. It’s actually a pension from the VA and it can provide between $1,432 and $2,642 this year. The benefit amounts actually just went up, perfect timing, on December 1, and they will stay this way until November 30. They went up 8.7%. The VA always follows the Social Security code, so that was a large jump this year. Being did the same. A surviving spouse can get $1,432, a single veteran $2,900, and a married veteran too, and then they use that extra income to help pay for their senior living community.

– That’s perfect. Yeah, so we could go through the four criteria to do that?

– Okay, there are four criteria of the benefit Military Medical Income Assets. So the first one: military. In order to be eligible, as Suzanne said, you need to be a wartime veteran or a surviving spouse of a wartime veteran. Now that does not mean you need to have served in the combat zone. So you could have served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, during that time period, that time frame, but you could be in the U.S. or any other country. As long as you have an active duty day during wartime, then you need a total of 90 active duty days. They don’t even have to be in a row. So Reservist National Guard, Merchant Marines, they may also be eligible as long as they’ve got their one day of active duty during a wartime period. Total of 90 active duty days. And then you need an honorable medical or general discharge. And all of that information is found on your discharge papers known as a DD-214. And if you don’t know where they are, ElderLife can help you with that. We have a VA Benefits department that will help you understand how to order your discharge papers. Should I go on to medical?

– Absolutely.

– So the next criteria is medical. So the VA is looking to see that you need help with two activities of daily living: bathing, dressing, toileting, feeding, transferring, ambulating, or a cognitive impairment dementia, Alzheimer’s, one or the other. People think it’s both; not true, one or the other, and truly, the easiest way to qualify is by allowing your community to help you with a shower assist. A shower assist is bathing and dressing. That’s your two criteria right there. All you need is a helping hand getting in and out of the shower so you don’t slip and fall, and you meet the medical criteria. There’s a three-page VA medical form. It can be completed by any doctor or nurse practitioner, so your community doctor, primary care physician, neurologist. You do not have to have it completed by a VA doctor. People also think that’s the case; not true. So, third criteria: monthly income versus monthly care costs. So the VA looks at all household incomes, social securities, pensions, wages, rental income, investment income for both parts of the couple. But here’s the good news. They let you subtract your care costs from your income and so that’s why moving into a MorningStar community will help you become eligible for the benefit, because you are now spending all, most or all of your income on your care and that will reduce your income to zero. Zero is the magic number with this benefit, because that’s how you get all the benefits. So spending all of your income on care is not a bad thing with this benefit. It actually helps you get the full pension every month.

And then, lastly, and I’ll take a breath. Lastly, VA looks at your assets, and there’s actually a very high asset limit for this benefit. It’s a $150,538 this year. You can have over $150,000 and still be eligible for this VA pension. So the VA will look at all of your counts, checking saving CDs, annuities, IRA, stocks, bonds, but they don’t count your primary residence. So, if your child is living in your home, or one part of the couple is still living in the home, the home that actually could be vacant or rented, and it still will not count against you. So you can have a home and $150,000. Now if you’re over the asset limit or selling the house is going to push you over the asset limit. ElderLife can actually refer you to people that know how to help you do VA planning, pre-parent advance for applying for this benefit because there is a look-back period with it, and that could be in that situation. A special needs trust could be put together, or the house could go into a trust which would help you qualify for the benefit. We refer to a VA accredited attorney, and typically that home moves into an irrevocable trust. I’m not an attorney, my layman’s understanding is it goes into an irrevocable trust so that when the homes sells, that $5,000 dollars doesn’t go to mom or dad, it goes into the trust.

So if you’re going to sell your house and you want to apply for the benefits, please reach out to us. You don’t want to put it on in the market and get a big check and now not be eligible for VA, then you’re sitting there with $800,000 in your bank account and they’re gonna go nope.

– So those are some things to just make sure that you can take care of those details are so widely important. A VA benefit one of the things that people are confused about. And I tell families this all the time. I will ask people questions, did your father serve in wartime? People think immediately combat. No, they just have to be an active duty one day of their military career during a time of war. And so they could have been enrolled on the last day of the Korean War and then all 90 days after the war was over and they would qualify. And that’s the thing I think is really important, that we emphasize to families that there’re some options out there. There’s a lot of seniors out there today that right now Vietnam is happening and sometimes World War II. There’s even some some seniors around that served in World War II. And so those are the things to look at, if there’s a way for you to to look to see what those dates were there the VA. You know you can get that information specifically for your loved one, can you not?

– Absolutely, so two ways I’ll give you. First option is you can request your discharge papers, would order to come through the National Archives, or if you contact us, we have a way to try to expedite them. Good three to four weeks. Or, here’s my cheat sheet. What year were you born, or your loved one born, and add 18 to it. That is going to tell you when that person went in and typically they served a year or two or longer. If they know how long they served. So 18 plus your birth year will give you an idea of when you went into service. Well, and if somebody’s 91 years old, chances are when they were in the military they started during wartime. There’s only a tiny little bit about three and a half years between World War II and Korea in the first half of fifty wartime. But if you call us, we will check your dates for you. We know at the beginning and end of the wartime period.

– Perfect. In talking about this benefit, when you said a spouse qualifies as well, tell us a little bit about that.

– Oh, yes, so there are actually more spouses on this benefit than veterans because there’s more spouses living into their 90s. So a spouse is eligible based on her wartime husband’s service. She always applies on the last husband, so if she was married to a wartime veteran who passes, she remarries a non wartime veteran, she is likely no longer eligible, so that remarriage can be an issue. A divorce from a veteran, you’re not going to be eligible. You need to be married to that wartime veteran at the time of death. But then you meet the same criteria as any veteran and $1,432 from the VA. You’ve probably never gotten a benefit from the VA before, but your husband’s service left you this wonderful benefit.

– And you talked a little bit about home care.

– Okay, so that’s how that benefit can help people if they need help at home rather than at senior living. So this benefit also helps people pay for home care. Is is actually the same dollar amount. Again, you need to show the VA you’re spending all of your income on care to get the full benefit, those numbers that are quoted. Oftentimes people utilizing home care get a partial benefit because they’re not spending all of their income on their care. They need to reserve a little bit of income for their utilities, their food, their rent, their mortgage, and so they can’t spend all of their income on care. Therefore they end up with a partial benefit. Now, when you move to senior living, you typically spend all of your income, but you also have no other bills. So that’s the wonderful thing about senior living. But yes, it’s the same criteria for home care, the same monthly maximums. It’s all based on how much you have coming in an income versus how much you have spending out on your care.

– So, Emily, how do we reach you?

– So you give us a call at ElderLife, 888-228-4500, and if you want to explore VA benefits, just let the financial concierge know that, and they will hand you over to the VIA benefits team. They can also offer your our other resources during the same phone call.

– Well, I’m thrilled to have you on, and I want to thank again, MorningStar Senior Living, for bringing Emily on. And Emily and are going to be right back right after this, and we’re gonna talk more about how your family can benefit financially in this later life period of time. Right after this.