By Jill Roamer, J.D. The VAPT (Veterans asset protection trust) is a powerful tool that can protect assets while enabling the grantor to qualify for needs-based pension benefits. There are two sub-trusts within the VAPT – one is a grantor sub-trust and the other is a non-grantor sub-trust. Why is it structured this way? The…
When calculating an A&A pension benefit amount, some medical and long-term care costs can be deducted from a client’s income. This allows some veterans and surviving spouses who would otherwise be over the income limit to qualify for the A&A pension. One such allowable deduction is the cost of paying a caregiver, including relatives, such as adult…
The VA Secretary, Robert Wilkie, disputes the science panel’s findings on presumptive diseases caused by Agent Orange saying ASEM did not identify any “definitive causal links” between Agent Orange and the diseases, and at least two — hypertension and bladder cancer — have other risk factors besides herbicide exposure, such as age, diet and tobacco…
The Appeals Modernization Act (AMA) of 2017 gave Veterans a greater choice in how to disagree with a VA claim decision. Giving Veterans more choice has been a top priority for VA. Cheryl Mason, the Chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, joined Ashleigh Barry on a special edition of VA News to take a deeper…
The Secure Act or THE SETTING EVERY COMMUNITY UP FOR RETIREMENT ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2019 was passed in late-December and is effective as of January 1, 2020. In our last newsletter we talked about retirement distributions. We will now look at how the Secure Act will affect beneficiaries and what we can do to work around…
