Mr. Strickland,
I came across your watchdog site after looking for information for my husband. He recently filed an increase for his PTSD claim in November 2012. The claim has finally made it into the "Preparation for Notification" stage as of 8/20/2013. On that same date a new claim appeared on his eBenefits, a predetermination: Incompetency Proposal.
Now we know exactly what it is from, at the C & P exam he stated that I, as his wife, takes care of all of our finances. That being said, I have ALWAYS taken care of our finances, his military time/service has had no direct relation to that. We are still young, expecting our first child, actually 8/20/2013 was our little boys due date but he is being quite stubborn and has still not arrived yet.. throughout the years we have made mistakes, but have learned from them, and with the back pay that would be owed on this claim, we set up a budget plan to pay off all of our debt, to raise our credit, so that we can obtain our first home.
I mean, literally I have spent HOURS on this budget, and we have even been looking at homes thinking that we would finally be on track and ready to make the life changing commitment of home ownership. I am so discouraged right now, and my husband is just very angry. I think it would be best if he tried to fight this, because like I said, at this time my credit is not good at all, and that is something I hear they look at when they pick a fiduciary.
My husband would like to make me his, but I think they would deny me and we would be given one and I cannot imagine someone else handling our finances. I take care of all of that. I spend hours every week writing budgets, (right now we live paycheck to paycheck and if we did not set up budget there would be no getting by) making payment arrangements with companies, making sure each bill is paid on time so that they do not get reported to the credit bureaus.
I just don't know what to do, and I have so many other things on my mind right now, ie: the baby coming any minute, work, bills, ect. This is the last thing I wanted to worry about, after almost a year of waiting for this claim to finish and thinking everything was finally going to be okay and we were going to welcome our new baby, and get our finances straightened out and buy a home for our new family, I just feel like we again got kicked 10 miles back.
If you have any suggestions, please, I would love to hear your thoughts. Like I said I have researched a lot on this and for what I am reading, I do not see very good outcomes.
Thank you for your time.
Reply:
I agree that you may oppose the appointment of a fiduciary...any fiduciary...even you. If he is able to manage his finances but chooses to let you do it, y'all are just like most Americans. Almost every household has one person balancing the books. It's usually the wife. VA ignores this common American way of doing things.
The VA believes that if the veteran isn't directly responsible for all his finances, he's "incompetent". This is a trick question during many C & P exams today: The examiner will ask the veteran, "Who handles the bills at your house?" If the veteran answers, "Oh well, my wife does", that ends the conversation. The examiner will note in the report, "Veteran is incompetent to manage his finances" and then the fight begins. A VA fiduciary is likely to take over your life.
Even if you were appointed as the fidu, VA would not let you spend the retroactive pay on the dreams you have. The VA will set up a strict, unrealistic budget, and you won't have any access to that money. The VA fiduciary system is punitive and not at all friendly to the veteran.
In any case...don't get ahead of the VA. Don't try to protest or appeal any action until it happens. Don't assume that VA will try to appoint a fidu because of what you read on eBenefits, they may not. So, wait patiently as this goes forward.
Once VA proposes the appointment of a fidu in a letter to your veteran, then you may tell them "No". All of this should be done in writing via certified mail.
I explain it all here http://www.vawatchdog.org/fiduciary-appointments.html
Please read that page...there's a lot there to read.
That page describes the only actions you may take when VA proposes a fiduciary for you. You can waste a lot of time calling VA or asking "representatives" to assist you and none of that will help. You must appeal if you don't believe that you should have a VA fiduciary. If you don't appeal and do the appeal by the strict regulations that VA insists on using, you will have a fiduciary appointed.
It's a lot simpler to do the appeal up front and avoid having a fiduciary appointed. Once one is appointed, getting rid of them is nearly impossible to do.