Military widows want benefits returned

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Frances Lovelace was married to Crawford Lovelace for 38 years.

He served in World War II and Korea. Like many couples of their generation, she took care of the kids and he took care of the money and bills.

But that changed when he died in 1988. Then when she started looking at her benefits as a survivor of a retired military man, she found her income dropped nearly in half.

"But we were Depression-era kids," said the Springfield resident. "I accepted it."

Thousands of survivors of retired military personnel, mostly widows like Lovelace, got a rude awakening when they turned 62. It was then the Defense Department cut the pension plan that their spouses had paid into for years.

"It was a shock," said Ann Freeman, 66, whose husband spent 21 years in the military. She watched as her income was cut $435 a month starting in 1998.

"I could meet all my bills. I could still pay the rent and insurance. But it curtailed some of the travel plans I had."

Many who enrolled in the survivor annuity plan in the 1970s say they understood their surviving spouses would receive 55 percent of their retirement pay for life. But that's not the case. The benefit drops to as low as 35 percent when survivors reach 62.

Lee Lange of the Military Officers Association of America called the cutback wrong.

"It just seems counterintuitive" that their benefits would be cut as they get older, he said.

About 800,000 of the nation's 1.9 million retirees pay 6.5 percent of their retirement pay to participate in the plan, and more than 250,000 survivors collect the benefits. Missouri ranks 20th in the number of those collecting benefits.

Service members are automatically enrolled in the program when they retire, but can opt out.

The controversial drop is called a Social Security offset. The theory was that the plan should give a survivor access to about 55 percent of the member's retired pay but from all sources related to military service, including Social Security.

The offset began as a dollar-for-dollar reduction but was changed in 1985 to the current plan.

Veterans organizations want Congress to eliminate the reduction.

Olan Payne of Ash Grove, a retired U.S. Army first sergeant, is part of the military support group in Greene County that lobbies on behalf of military issues.

"We're fighting Washington every day on that," he said.