ericpalmsprings

Hi Berta and Gulf--thanks for your responses. I have a call into my attorney on this, so I'm trying to see if there is any way around it. My brother is legally my brother, so there's no way around that. As to my mother's will--there is no longer a will as there was no money left in her estate. A special needs trust was set up in her name and I am the trustee--all of her bills were paid out of that trust. I asked my attorney if the trust could claim title to the benefits as a 'creditor'. I can come up with documentation for money paid out of my pocket that I also might be able to reduce my brother's share. I will follow-up when I hear back from my attorney.

I have been working wiht the VA to secure my mother's benefits for Aid and Attendent care--I originally applied for the benefits in 12/08. Through various delays, claim denials and mistakes made by the incompetent regional VA office, I was forced to contact my Congress person. Benefis for my mother were finally approved in March of this year, however they also declared her incompetent so I had to go through the fiduciary assignment that was finally approved a week before she passed away. The VA owes us over $16K in accrued benefits. Looking into the accrued benefits claim it states that, "When the deceased benficiary is a surviving spouse, accrued is payable in equal shares to the veteran's children.". I am one of three siblings in my family. My brother has been estranged from our family for many years and was also disinherited. He made a single visit to his mother during her 3 year battle with her illness. And now, according to the VA, he is going to get 1/3 of this benefit! This makes me sick to my stomach as this would have gone against my mother's wishes and certainly is an insult to injury for me as her primary caregiver who paid for many things out of my own pocket. Has anyone on these boards experienced any situation like this? Is there any way around it?

I wanted to give an update on my mom's situation: Out of the blue a VA Pension check, that stated it was for May, showed up in the mail. Hooray! It only took 18 months. We've gotten no award letter and the only indication of any retroactive pension funds was mentioned in the last letter about declaring my mother incompetent. Based on my calculations we are owed 17 months of retroactive funds. I'm ecstatic that she finally got a check, but we really need the rest of it as we're in the hole. I've been working with my Congress person whose office started out being attentive, but now hasn't returned my last two phone calls. And the local VA rep isn't very helpful. Does anyone have any expereince with this? Should I just wait and see what transpires over the next few weeks?

Thank you for the kind words Pete. I shudder to think about the poor widows out there that have no one to help them through this mess. It's just insult to injury when you read the correspondence to the person the VA has deemed incompetent--even if you were competent, it's difficult to understand. There's a great paragraph in the lettter under the heading "How this decision could affect you": "A determination of incompetency will prohibit you from purchasing, possessing, recieving or transporting a firearm or ammunition" Seriously??? How about: this will affect you by further delaying your claim wiht the va???? The least of my mom's worries would be whether she can carry a gun or not, yet that's the only thing in the letter! It would be funny if it weren't reality.

Hi Berta, thank you so much for taking time to respond to my post. I have a call into my Congressional Rep's office to discuss this. My gut is telling me to respond to the letter by stating that we do not wish to contest the incompetency decision--that would at least eliminate one roadblock. If we don't respond they will take another 60-days to arrive at the same conclusion and we're running out of time and money. What really irks me in this whole process is that I really feel that I was led astray by the VA rep that I initiated this claim with us 15 months ago--he pretty much dissuaded me from claiming my mother incompetent in the first place because it would further delay the claim. Here I am 15 months later with a declaration of incompetency and further delays. And I am so angry over this VA policy of non-recognition of civilian POAs. It's the most absurd policy! My mother spent thousands of dollars for an attorney to protect herself and all of it is worhtless when it comes to the VA and then they create a huge bureaucratic nightmare process to establish a fiduciary when one has already been created in the first place.

Hello--this is my first post on this board so I apologize up front if this has been covered already. My mother is the advanced stages of Alzheimer's and is currently living in an assisted-living facility for dementia. My mother has few financial resources and at cost of over $4K a month to live in a safe, secure care facility, we need all the assistance we can get. She is a widow of 5 years and my father was a USN vet who served during the Korean War. 17 months ago I applied for VA benefits just to end up in a seemingly endless VA nightmare of errors and claim denials. Exasperated, I finally turned to my Congressional rep in my district here in Palm Springs, CA. Finally this past, Friday I received a notice that she will be awarded the A&A benefit retroactive to the date we applied, that's the good news, the not so good news is that the VA is declaring her incompetent (which she is) and will be seeking a financial fiduciary. The letter we recieved is requesting her repy to contest their determination of incompetency. She is most definitely incompetent and has been for quite sometime--fortunately we had put legal documents in place for Power of Attny for her as myself as her POA, but as is well known, the VA stupidly doesn't recognize civilian POAs. I am unsure how to respond to this letter--should we state something to the affect that we will accept the VA's incompetency declaration to expedite the claims processing? We have not received an awards letter yet BTW. Also how is the financial fiduciary assigned? Can it be a family member like myself? i have a fear that the VA will assigne fiduciary to a thrid-aprty that will suck up all the assets--how can this be avoided? Should I put in the reply that my mother would like her caregiver son (me) to be the fiduciary as I am already handeling all f her affairs? Thank you so much in advance for your kind assistance and Happy Mother's Day! Kind regards, Eric