VA Pension or Aid & Attendance — What is it?
VA Pension or Aid & Attendance — What is it?
You may have heard of this benefit somewhere, and you may be wondering what exactly this is. It can pay over $25,000 a year to help with long-term care. In your home, in an assisted living facility, or even in a nursing home.
What or who is this benefit for?
It’s a “non-service” related.
What that means is this is not for an injury that was suffered while serving in the military.
This is not being shot.
Or hurting your back while you’re in the military.
Neither is it about not contracting some type of disease while in the military.
Most of us are familiar with “Agent Orange.”
Folks that were in the Vietnam War were exposed to that if they were in the country of Vietnam.
There are lots of diseases related to that.
However. we’re not talking about any kind of service-related injury or disease.
This is non-service related. This means that you were in the service and now you have some health problems. Your health problems are not related to your service.
This is for a wartime veteran or spouses of wartime veterans (surviving spouses – widows, or widowers) that are now having health problems.
This money is paid directly to the veteran or surviving spouse.
This is different than, for example, Alabama Medicaid.
Money is paid directly to the veteran in this case.
Quick summary of the three elements required to qualify for this benefit
We have three things we look for:
- Military
- Health or disability
- Financial (assets and income)
In the military, we are looking for a wartime veteran who received an honorable discharge. If we are talking about a surviving spouse qualifying for the benefit, we still look at the military service of the deceased spouse.
Now with the health or disability aspect, this benefit primarily is for veterans (or surviving spouses) who need help in the activities of daily living. Normally these activities are:
- Dressing
- Bathing
- Going to the bathroom
- Getting up and down from a chair or bed
- Eating — whether someone reminds you to eat, or physically helps you to eat.
On the financial side, we are looking at what is known as IVAP (Income for VA Purposes) as well as the total amount of net worth.
Hopefully, this gives you a quick overview of what this benefit is and we invite you to contact us to find out more.
Contact Us.
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us and we will be glad to help you figure out your best course of action,
You can reach us by phone at 1-205-879-2447.
Or, you can fill out a contact form and we will get in touch with you.
We look forward to chatting with you.
Thanks for reading, and have a great day!
PS — you may be interested in watching a VA Aid & Attendance interview I did a number of years ago. Since the numbers have changed a bit, we will be updating this in the near future. However, the concepts are still the same.