What to Do When a Veteran Dies

Fewer things than it looks like from the outside, and they overlap.

One form does most of it. VA Form 21P-534EZ, Application for DIC, Survivors Pension, and/or Accrued Benefits, claims all three at once. A surviving spouse or child does not have to work out which of the three applies before filing, because the form is assessed against all of them.

Where the death was on active duty the form is VA Form 21P-534a instead. Where the claimant is the veteran's parent it is VA Form 21P-535. Burial benefits are separate and use VA Form 21P-530EZ, Application for Burial Benefits.

That is the whole federal set. Everything else in the first weeks belongs to other institutions.

Because it changes the amount rather than the answer, and nobody says so.

38 CFR 3.400(c)(2) sets the effective date for a claim following a service-connected death as the first day of the month in which the veteran's death occurred, if the claim is received within one year after the date of death. Otherwise it is the date of receipt of the claim. The same one-year structure runs through the neighboring paragraphs for a death in service and for a non-service-connected death.

In practice that is the difference between benefits starting in the month of the funeral and benefits starting whenever the paperwork was finally sent. If a claim goes in fourteen months after the death, roughly fourteen months of payments are not made, and no appeal recovers them, because nothing went wrong.

Accrued benefits are stricter still. 38 CFR 3.1000(c) says the application must be filed within one year after the date of death, full stop.

Money VA owed the veteran and had not yet paid when they died. An increase that had been decided but not disbursed, or a claim that was still being worked on at the time of death.

38 CFR 3.1000(a) sets the order of payees: the spouse first, then the children in equal shares, then the dependent parents in equal shares or the surviving parent. One person's failure to file in time does not push the money down to the next class. If the spouse does not file within the year, the children do not inherit the chance.

There is one piece of good news buried in the same paragraph. A claim by a surviving spouse, child, parent or apportionee for survivors pension, compensation or DIC automatically includes a claim for accrued benefits. Filing 21P-534EZ covers it, so a family that files for DIC in the first year has already claimed this without knowing it.

It is not clawed back, and a surprising number of families return it because they assume it will be.

38 CFR 3.20(c)(1) covers a veteran who died after December 31, 1996. A surviving spouse who is not otherwise entitled to death benefits for that month receives a benefit for that month equal to the amount of compensation or pension the veteran would have received but for the death. Where a payment has already been issued to the veteran, 3.20(c)(2) treats it as payable to a qualifying surviving spouse.

If there is no qualifying surviving spouse, or the amount is insufficient, it is handled as accrued benefits and follows the order of payees above.

A separate rule at 38 CFR 3.20(b) applies to deaths on or after October 1, 1982: a surviving spouse may receive survivors benefits for the month of death at the rate that would have been payable to the veteran, but only where that rate is equal to or greater than the spouse's own entitlement.

Two different sets of numbers, and they get run together constantly. They are kept apart here on purpose.

Where the death was service connected and the veteran died on or after September 11, 2001, the maximum burial allowance is $2,000. That figure is flat. It does not move with the annual table and it has not changed since 2001.

Where the death was not service connected, the amounts key to the date of death and reset every October 1. For a veteran who died on or after October 1, 2025, VA pays a burial allowance of $1,002 and a further $1,002 for a plot, with a headstone or marker allowance of $441. For deaths between October 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025 the figures were $978 and $978, with $371 for a headstone. For October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024 they were $948 and $948, with $263. For October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023, $893 and $893, with $255.

Read that as: the date of death decides the amount, not the date the claim is filed. A claim filed today for a death in 2023 is paid at the 2023 figures.

There is also reimbursement for transporting the veteran's remains where they were hospitalized at the time of death or were traveling under VA authorization.

VA states it plainly: there is no time limit if the veteran's death was service connected.

Where the death was not service connected, a claim must be filed within two years after the veteran's burial. Two exceptions remove that limit. There is no limit where the death occurred while the veteran was in VA care, and there is no limit on the plot or interment allowance or on the transportation allowance.

The form is VA Form 21P-530EZ, and it is separate from 21P-534EZ. Filing one does not file the other.

An accredited veterans service organization representative can file every form named on this page, and it costs nothing. Recognized VSOs do not charge for claims representation. County veterans service offices employ accredited representatives and are usually the closest one to a family that has never dealt with any of this before.

That matters more here than elsewhere, because survivor claims arrive at the worst possible moment for a person to be learning a new administrative system. Somebody who has filed four hundred of these will do it faster and will not miss the one-year mark.

The other reason to use one: they will know to look for the second route into DIC. A death that was not caused by a service-connected condition can still support DIC under 38 U.S.C. 1318 if the veteran had held a totally disabling rating for the qualifying period beforehand. A family filing alone rarely knows that route exists.