Three years ago, advocates for military families succeeded in winning a significant expansion in survivor benefits, which include life insurance, a death gratuity, medical care and housing and education assistance. But the increases have left some widows and next of kin clearly rattled by the collision of mourning and money. %26#8220;It%26#8217;s like winning the lottery, and your relatives all look at you like you%26#8217;re a cash cow,%26#8221; said Kathleen B. Moakler, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization. %26#8220;Money makes people do strange things.%26#8221;The parents of Sgt. Eli Parker of the Marines, killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, used the $500,000 to finance their retirement, remodel their house near Syracuse and travel to Washington for the Marine Corps Marathon. After Sgt. Dominic J. Sacco of the Army was killed three years ago by an insurgent attack on his tank, his widow, Brandy, fielded requests for cash from family members she had not talked to for years %26#151; as well as from her husband%26#8217;s ex-wife and a woman in prison who claimed that Sergeant Sacco had fathered her son. Kayla Avery, whose husband was killed seven months after their West Point wedding, invested most of the payout, but not before buying new bedroom furniture, a Louis Vuitton wallet and a purple Coach bag to match her funeral clothes.%26#8220;I thought, %26#8216;Well, this is my husband%26#8217;s last Christmas gift to me,%26#8217; %26#8221; said Ms. Avery, 25, a graduate student in psychology who lives in Tennessee, near Fort Campbell, where her husband, First Lt. Garrison C. Avery, was an Army platoon leader. It is impossible to know how many survivors of the service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan have struggled with managing the benefits, and in interviews with dozens of military families, only a handful were willing to talk specifically about how they spent the money. Many families use the money to secure children%26#8217;s futures, pay off mortgages, or otherwise make up for a long-term loss of income. But experts on military families say that they are seeing a growing number of problems, and that young widows %26#151; often na%26#239;ve about finance and easily seduced by the glamorous accouterments of pop culture %26#151; seem to be especially vulnerable, trying to somehow fill emotional gaps with material things and ending up in debt instead.%26#8220;When you face sudden death, and the death of someone your own age, you think, %26#8216;I could die, too,%26#8217; %26#8221; said Joanne M. Steen, co-author of %26#8220;Military Widow: A Survival Guide%26#8221; (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2006). %26#8220;All of a sudden you get hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there%26#8217;s a perception that it%26#8217;s going to last forever, but it doesn%26#8217;t. You%26#8217;re dealing with some really tumultuous emotions and unclear thinking.%26#8221;In 2005, the so-called death gratuity %26#151; the sum given to survivors for an active-duty death %26#151; jumped to $100,000 from $12,420, and the military%26#8217;s group life insurance maximum rose to $400,000 from $250,000. Both are retroactive to October 2001, covering the nearly 4,500 service members who have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since. There are myriad other survivor benefits, too, many determined by specific circumstances. Joyce Wessel Raezer, chief operating officer of the National Military Family Association, said that a hypothetical widow of an Army corporal based at Fort Drum, in upstate New York, with three years of service and two young children would likely receive payments totaling $5,335 a month for the first year. In addition, a spouse would get free medical care for three years %26#151; the children into adulthood %26#151; and all would receive education assistance.Through private companies, the Department of Veterans Affairs provides insurance beneficiaries the service of a professional financial planner for a year, but a spokesman said that only one in 10 families uses it. Bill Saunders, director of client services for the Armed Forces Services Corporation, a private firm based in Arlington, Va., that offers military families advice on such issues, said that survivors are often overwhelmed by grief when they learn of the availability of financial advice, and that the military would do well to remind them after a few months. 1 2 Next Page %26#x00bb;
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