In this Elder Law Minute, Wes Coulson discusses VA Aid & Attendance benefits, and if National Guard and Reservists can qualify.
Transcript:
Today I want to talk about a question relative to VA Aid & Attendance eligibility that we come across every once in a while, and that is whether a reservist or someone who served in the National Guard can qualify for the VA Aid & Attendance benefits. The quick answer is it’s a possibility, but we need to look just beyond that reserve or National Guard service.
The VA’s requirement relative to the active duty service requirement is that the veteran has to of served at least 90 consecutive days on active duty, at least one of those being during a period of war. The VA has the dates on their website, www.va.gov, if you want to know if it was during war time. The basic training that a reservist or somebody in the National Guard would go through doesn’t constitute active duty, but if somebody is called up after that either immediately or down the road, that indeed can enable them to qualify.
The easiest way to check is to look at your military discharge papers, most commonly what’s called a from DD 214, and that shows your beginning and end dates of active duty. If you compare those to the VA’s wartime period and see that it was at least 90 days, that’s going to tell you whether you meet that requirement.
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