Question:
Hi. My husband passed years ago. It took 4 years to receive a spouse pension. Last year, March, 2020, I received Social Security and his retirement pension. I notified them immediately. Every month they continue to deposit the VA check? I called three times. The first tine I called, they were working from home because of COVID. I don't know what happened to information I provided. I called again. They finally sent papers stating my income and information. Then it took 60 days for them to reply back. I faxed everything in after I received the papers. They continue to deposit pension. I don't know if this will affect taxes. It's now over $25,000 . I would appreciate any help. I don't know what to do. Thank you. God bless you.
Jim's Reply:
I understand what a frustrating problem this can be. You aren't the first who has received money from the VA that they weren't supposed to be receiving and they can't seem to cut off the flow. I advocated for a young veteran on the east coast a decade ago who had a single misplaced $350,000.00 deposit made by VA and it took us a couple of weeks to straighten that out. VA didn't want the money back at first...I had to convince them and then they drained his entire account so we had to make an effort to get his rightful money back.
VA will eventually figure out that those deposits to you were made in error and they will immediately take that money back. Until that happens you've done all you are able to and you aren't obligated to do any more. Do keep accurate records of any activity where you've notified VA and so on.
Most importantly...don't spend a dime of that money. If you were to spend it VA will want it back and they'll go to great lengths to recover their money. If you are able to it's best that you leave that particular bank account alone and use another account for your day to day transactions. If you can't do that, be sure to keep good records of where all that money is and how much is rightfully yours.
You're correct that all this is made worse by the pandemic. VA and many other government as well as civilian institutions are a mess right now and it's going to be a long while before they recover. While this is happening the best we can do is to protect ourselves and do what we can to help our service providers do their jobs.
I can't speak to taxes since I don't know your overall situation but I'd make a bet that this won't affect your taxes because VA will take care of it sooner than that. Don't spend the money, be patient and it'll all work out. Good luck.