Dying Vietnam Veteran Wed in Hospital Room Has to Pay Back Thousands?

VA delay triggers $6,324 bill for dying veteran who got married
Veterans Affairs wants a Gold Bar couple to repay more than $6,000 in pension overpayments, caused by the VA’s paperwork backlog.
Seattle Times
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
December 3, 2014

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Debbie Shafer takes care of her husband, Rob Arthur, who is terminally ill with brain cancer, in their Gold Bar mobile home.

GOLD BAR, Snohomish County — When Rob Arthur was diagnosed with brain cancer back in January, the gaunt, gray-haired Vietnam veteran decided to wed his longtime girlfriend, Debbie Shafer, in a hospital room.

The marriage has been a source of comfort for this couple as they face the challenges of an unforgiving disease, deemed terminal, in a trailer home set by the steep flanks of the North Cascade mountains.

It also has been a big source of stress in their dealings with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Last summer, the VA ruled that Arthur — his earnings boosted by his wife’s wages as a nurse’s aide — was no longer eligible for an income-based pension and would have to repay $6,324 in checks mailed out during the more than six months that the department took to make this decision.

“They are mental abusers right now, is the way I look at it,” Shafer said. “And that’s not a kind way to look at your government. We got knocked down, and now they are stomping on us. We don’t have the money to pay them.”

These overpayments are more fallout from the troubled VA’s inability to keep up with a massive caseload of veterans who turn to the department for benefits. These delays sometimes can create major financial problems for the veterans by sticking them with unexpected bills to repay checks they should not have received.

“It can be an incredible hardship,” said Amy Fairweather, a policy director at San Francisco-based Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit veterans service organization. “The onus should be on the VA to take care of these matters and not to go after destitute or low-income veterans to pay back pensions.”

VA officials say their actions are guided by federal law.
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