Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 01/15/2011 9:34:51 AM PST by vmpolesov
Brooksville, Florida (CNN) -- Freda Green thought the battle was over when her husband returned from the Vietnam War.
But more than seven years after his death in 2003, she says the U.S. Defense Department is demanding she repay more than $41,000 in benefits the government shelled out as part of an insurance policy he paid into.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
The Defense Department needs this money to pay for the $500,000 in upgrades to buses they are buying to give FREE transportation to people who have a job, at the MARK cntr, to get moeny from widows...what is wrong with this picture?
>she then cashed the check, paying more than $6,000 in taxes.
Ah, Government, where paying your taxes is not enough to prevent them from taxing or seizing your property.
“I’m sorry miss, but the price for...protection, just went up.”
I thought the bureaucratic bumbling in this article was typical. They gave her 45 days then two weeks later started collections (two weeks is considerably less than 45 days).
OH PUL-LEEEZE!
This is well known. I bet the woman knew this and just kept quiet. Now she has to pay back what was not hers to have.
Reading the article it doesn't appear that there was any intent to defraud.
When her husband died...determined were military-related, Green had to choose between collecting his pension or a separate monthly benefit from the Veterans Administration.
She chose the latter.
In addition to the monthly benefit, the Pentagon sent her more than $41,000 from the government-sponsored insurance policy her husband purchased.
Green said she received the lump-sum check shortly after his death.
It prompted her to call the Defense Department for an explanation, she said.
"I called Air Force finance, and they said, 'No. That's your money.' I was afraid...they made a mistake."
The letter from the Air Force reads: "Because Jerry died from 100 percent service-connected disabilities, all of the money he paid for survivor's benefits is to be refunded."
"That's what they told me," she recalled.
Green said she then cashed the check, paying more than $6,000 in taxes.
In 2009, a federal judge ruled survivors could get both of the original benefits if they remarry after the age of 57.
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If I understand this correctly, she's getting the $41k paid as a refund, not as a benefit, then she has the priviledge of paying taxes on it and now the gov't wants it ALL back, this woman will have essentially paid $12k to the gov't if she's not "credited" the original $6k she paid.
Plus, Finance stated it was a REFUND of premiums paid. It's not a benefit.
I'm not going to presume to know how ALL of this works because they deliberately make it confusing as hell sometimes, but this one appears to be sticking it to the spouse.
Yeah but this is a supplemental plan that her husband PAID into, it is not a free plan. Wouldn’t that be different?
Scam by the insurance companies
More:
My mother is friends with a couple who have been living as husband and wife for 20 years, just not on paper. The reason is so the woman can still keep her widow’s benefits.
A further question would be whether the $41k in premiums payed by her deceased husband were paid on a pre-tax basis. If not then they got double taxed, and the government is going for triple-taxing.
Also was the $41k return of premiums inflation adjusted when she received it or not?
Also there is the damage this causes in the form of current and prospective future military members observing this kind of treatment.
And yet, we have people walk across our border who get free services starting on day one. Does anyone demand they pay it back? Hell no.
So yeah, let’s go after those damned widows. Makes sense to me. /s
There are times when I honestly... well, never-mind. You’re thinking it too.
Why do all these crazy regulations seem to encourage shacking up over marriage?
Same reason welfare for decades was better for the unmarried woman and even better yet the more out of wedlock children she had.
Funny how that works, eh? ;)
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