Guardian denied death benefit

The government screws the next of kin too. :puke:

"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."

<snip>

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?""

More...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17179904/

It's a simple question of need. If it means some kind of trust setup, where a proportion is released each year, fine - but the basic wish of any soldier has always been "take care of our widows(/widowers now) and children", through the centuries. There's a much better case for saying the money should all come before the children turn 18 - after that, they're an adult themselves. What a screwed up system.