Department of Veterans Affairs October 14, 2021 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) proposes to amend its regulations to limit the circumstances in which benefits will be apportioned and to stop apportioning certain benefits. Currently, in limited situations, VA may pay a portion of a VA beneficiary's monetary benefits directly to the beneficiary's dependents. This is referred to as apportionment of benefits. Most claims for apportionment involve complex issues of family law, issues that are best suited to the expertise and authority of state courts. VA claims adjudicators have limited ability to analyze these complex and fact-intensive claims, to include both technical expertise as well as an ability to compel participation in necessary accounting measures. When VA awards apportionments, decisions rendered can disturb state court support awards, requiring a state court to expend additional resources to revisit a prior determination. Finally, due to their intricacy, a significant amount of information is needed to properly adjudicate apportionment claims. While this information is typically already available to state courts, VA must attempt to gather this information from the VA beneficiary and beneficiary's dependent, which is unavoidably a time-consuming process and often cannot result in a comprehensive evidentiary picture. The additional time and effort needed to gather this information increases VA workloads and results in the potential for delays of all VA claims processes, to include apportionment awards. Because VA apportionment awards often conflict with the awards of better-situated state family courts and because VA lacks the authority and expertise to make fully-informed, accurate, and economically appropriate awards, VA is proposing to amend its regulations to discontinue making apportionment awards in most circumstances and to stop apportioning certain benefits.