Noteboom The Law Firm

War veterans' widows wrongly denied benefits...

After receiving a complaint from a widow, U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who leads the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, learned that the VA never updated their automated computer systems after a 1996 law was passed that gives veterans' spouses the right to keep their partners' final month of benefits. It instructed the VA to make changes to comply with the law, which took effect for spouses of veterans who died after Dec. 31, 1996.

As a result, widows were either denied the final month of payment or asked to send the checks back. In many cases, if the checks were deposited or spent, the Treasury Department moved to seize the money directly from the widows' accounts.

When Sen. Akaka confronted VA Secretary James Peake about the problem in a letter last week, Peake told the Veterans Benefits Administration to update its systems to prevent future denials of benefits.

The Veterans Affairs Department, which said Saturday that it wasn't fully aware of the problem, pledged to work quickly to give back the pension and disability checks - ranging from $100 to more than $2,500 - that hundreds of thousands of widows should have received in the month of their spouse's death.

The department indicated in an "action plan" provided to The Associated Press that back payments, possibly totaling millions of dollars, could be given to widows sometime after February.

The VA said widows who think they were wrongly denied payments can call its help line at 1-800-827-1000.