Assistance program
Pension to Veterans Surviving Spouses, and Children
$7.8 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Veterans Benefits Administration, Veterans Affairs, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use
- CFDA number
- 64.105
- What it does
- To assist needy surviving spouses, and children of deceased war-time veterans whose deaths were not service connected.
- Who benefits
- Qualified surviving spouses and unmarried dependent children of deceased war-time Veterans who meet certain income and net worth limits set by Congress.
- Who applies
- Unmarried surviving spouses and children of deceased Veterans who met the wartime service requirements or was a wartime Veteran who was receiving (or was entitled to receive) disability compensation at the time of death. Veterans who entered service after September 7, 1980, must also have met the minimum active duty requirement of 24 months of continuous service or the full period to which the Veteran was called to active duty. Veterans discharged on or after October 16, 1981, must have served for two years or the length to which called to active duty, if less than two years, or have a service-connected disability (38 U.S.C. 5303). A child must be unmarried and under 18 (23 if in school), or disabled before 18 and continuously incapable of self-support. (38 U.S.C. 1542) Pension is not payable to those whose estates are so large that it is reasonable they use the estate for maintenance. (38 U.S.C. 1543) A Veteran meets wartime service requirements if he/she served: • a total of 90 days or more during one or more periods of war; • 90 or more consecutive days that began or ended during a period of war; or • for any length of time during a period of war if they were discharged or released for a service-connected disability. (38 U.S.C. 1541, 5303A)
- Authorized by
- Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, FY 2024 Appropriations Bill
- Program site
- https://www.va.gov/pension/survivors-pension/ ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Recipients
This program's money is paid out as non-itemized direct payments — USAspending records it under a single aggregate, so individual recipients aren't listed. The dollars and agencies above are complete; the recipient roster isn't part of the public record for programs like this.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments