Grandparents raising slain soldiers' children are denied a government benefit intended to sustain the bereaved.
By Donna St. George
The Washington Post
Her daughter was killed by a bomb in Iraq. Eight months later, Susan Jaenke is both grief-stricken and strapped - behind on her mortgage, backed up on her bills and shut out of the $100,000 government death benefit that her daughter thought she had left her.
The problem is that Jaenke is not a wife, not a husband, but instead grandmother to the 9-year-old her daughter left behind. "Grandparents," she said, "are forgotten in this."
For the Jaenkes and others like them, the toll of war can be especially complex: They face not only the anguish of losing a son or daughter but also the emotional, legal and financial difficulties of putting the pieces back together for a grandchild.
They confront this without the $100,000 "death gratuity" that military spouses ordinarily get - a payment intended to ease the financial strain as families await government survivors' benefits.
"It really does get complicated for them," said Joyce Raezer of the National Military Family Association. The load of responsibilities placed on that generation - both during deployment and if a service member is injured or killed - "is a huge issue."
The case of Petty Officer 2nd Class Jaime S. Jaenke, a Navy construction-battalion medic killed last June in Anbar province, is particularly striking because she was a single parent who clearly meant to assign her mother the benefit. Jaenke, 29, filled in her mother's name on a form and carefully spelled out her wishes in a letter.
But by law, the $100,000 benefit goes first to a spouse or a child. So 9-year-old Kayla Jaenke collects the $100,000 - plus $400,000 in life insurance - after she turns 18, leaving Susan Jaenke to ask, "What about the next nine years?"
In some other families, the $100,000 death benefit has gone to neither the children nor the grandparents who are raising them.
(more... )
Source: The Forgotten Families
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