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What the VA Actually Covers, What It Does Not, and Where to Get the Rest
Every benefit on this page is real, and most of them are smaller than families expect. That is not a complaint about the VA. It is the arithmetic nobody hands you at the worst possible moment, and it is the reason this page exists. I served twelve years in the Navy. When I started building Memorial Merits I read the same benefit pages every family reads, and I kept running into the same wall: they will tell you what you are entitled to, and they will never tell you what it leaves you holding.
So this page does both. What the VA pays, what it does not reach, and the vetted places that cover the difference. No email required, nothing gated, and where a partner pays us the listing says so.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. Buying through one may pay us a commission and never changes your price.
- If you are serving right now: the paperwork that protects your family is not the paperwork your command checks. Start with the nine documents that actually matter before a deployment.
- If you just separated or retired: your benefit picture changed the day you signed out, and several of the items below have enrollment windows rather than open doors. Read the benefits section first.
- If you are a spouse, a parent or a survivor: the benefits that reach you are a different set from the ones that reached the veteran. Go to Survivor and Family Support.
- If someone has passed in the last few days: the VA burial allowance is real, and for a non service connected death it is $1,002 plus a $1,002 plot allowance, $2,004 together. A funeral in most states costs several times that. Help With the Cost is where to start, and it is honest about the difference.
- If you are in crisis or worried about someone: the Veterans Crisis Line is 988, then press 1. It is free, it runs all day and night, and you do not need to be enrolled in VA care to use it.
What You Are Owed
Benefits Every Veteran and Family Should Know About
These are the entitlements themselves, listed with what they cover and what they leave out. The VA publishes all of it, and it publishes it in the order the agency thinks about it rather than the order a family needs it. This is the order a family needs it.
For a non service connected death on or after October 1, 2025, the VA pays a $1,002 burial allowance plus a separate $1,002 plot allowance, $2,004 together. For a service connected death on or after September 11, 2001, the maximum burial allowance is $2,000. Read those two figures next to each other, because almost nobody does: the service connected maximum sits just under the combined non service connected total. Either way it is a reimbursement to whoever paid the bill rather than a payment to the funeral home, and somebody has to apply for it.
Free for an eligible veteran, and it includes the grave, the opening and closing, a government headstone or marker, a burial flag and perpetual care. Spouses and dependent children are usually eligible too. This is the single largest cost the VA absorbs outright, and it is the one families most often do not know is available.
The VA provides a headstone or marker at no cost for an eligible veteran in any cemetery, national or private. If the grave already has a privately purchased headstone, a bronze medallion can be affixed to it instead. Both are ordered rather than automatic.
Every eligible veteran is entitled to at least two uniformed service members, the folding and presentation of the flag, and the playing of Taps. The funeral home usually requests it on the family’s behalf, and it is worth confirming they have, because the request has to be made rather than assumed.
A surviving spouse, child or dependent parent may qualify for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, a survivors pension, education assistance, and health coverage. These are separate programs with separate applications, and qualifying for one does not enrol you in the others. Our fuller write up is here.
Nearly every item above needs a specific form number, and the wrong form is the most common reason a claim stalls. The VA keeps them all in one searchable library.
Closing the Gap
Help With the Cost: Discounts, Financing and Assistance
Here is the sentence the government cannot write about its own program. The combined burial and plot allowance for a non service connected death is $2,004. The median funeral in most states runs several times that, and our state by state funeral cost directory has the real number for where you live rather than a national average. The allowance is help. It is not coverage. Everything in this section exists to close what is left.
An itemized estimate instead of a package price. Most families are quoted a package and never see what each line costs, which is where the difference between $4,000 and $11,000 hides.
Open the funeral cost calculator ›Buying a casket direct rather than through the funeral home is a federal right, and the funeral home has to accept it. Military and veteran caskets start around $2,695 with free shipping.
See military caskets ›Partner discount codes across caskets, urns, markers, memorial keepsakes and estate documents, verified monthly. Several stack with a military discount.
Open the Family Savings Center ›Fundraising, financing and assistance programs, including the ones that pay before the funeral rather than reimbursing after it, which is the distinction that actually matters this week.
Open Financial Resources ›One thing about the burial allowance that catches almost everyone: it is a reimbursement. The family pays the funeral home first and the VA pays the family back afterward. If that ordering is the problem, and it very often is, the financial resources page above is the right door rather than this one.
Reachable Right Now
Crisis and Mental Health Support
You do not have to be enrolled in VA health care to use any of this, and you do not have to be in crisis to call a crisis line. Everything here is free.
Available every hour of every day, by phone, text to 838255, or online chat. Open to veterans, service members, National Guard and Reserve, and to family members and friends who are worried about someone. Enrollment in VA care is not required.
Community based counseling centers offering free counseling to combat veterans and to bereaved family members, separate from the VA hospital system and with no enrollment requirement. Grief counseling for a family who lost a service member is available here at no cost.
Some families would rather see somebody with no connection to the service at all, and that is a reasonable preference. Our vetted counseling and therapy options, including low cost and sliding scale providers, are here.
Spouses, Children and Parents
Survivor and Family Support
Survivor benefits are the part of this system families are least prepared for, because they are administered separately from everything the veteran dealt with while living. A spouse who handled every VA appointment for years can still find the survivor side unfamiliar, and that is by design of the paperwork rather than any fault of theirs.
Peer support from other military survivors, a 24 hour helpline, grief camps for children, seminars and retreats. Free to any family grieving a military death, regardless of how or when the death occurred, and regardless of duty status.
Each service branch runs its own program of support, remembrance and casualty assistance for families who lost a service member on active duty. Our piece on how Gold Star families mark Memorial Day was written by a service member.
Education and training benefits for the spouse and children of a veteran who passed from a service connected condition, or who was permanently and totally disabled. Separate application, separate eligibility rules from the compensation programs.
Free lodging for families of veterans and service members receiving treatment at a military or VA medical center, so a family is not paying for a hotel across the country while somebody is in care.
Vetted, and Free to Use
National Organizations We Trust
These are the majors rather than the full list, and that is deliberate. A directory of four hundred organizations helps nobody at eleven at night. Every one below is national, free to the family, and has been doing this long enough to still be here next year.
Free help filing and appealing VA claims, from accredited service officers, whether or not you are a member. This is the single most useful free service in the space, because a claim filed correctly the first time saves months.
Every state runs benefits the federal VA does not: property tax relief, state veteran cemeteries, tuition waivers, licence fee exemptions. These are frequently worth more per year than the federal items families spend all their attention on, and almost nobody checks.
Both run accredited claims assistance alongside local post support, and both have emergency financial assistance programs that most members never hear about. Local post membership is not required to use the claims service.
An increased monthly pension for a veteran or surviving spouse who needs help with daily living or is housebound. It is one of the least claimed benefits in the system relative to how many people qualify, largely because it sits inside the pension program rather than standing on its own.
Written and Published by Memorial Merits
The Military and Veteran Library
Everything above points outward, to the VA, to national organizations, to the programs that already exist. This section points inward, to what we have written ourselves. It is deliberately small right now and it grows every time we publish. Each guide below was written or verified by a Navy veteran rather than assembled from other people’s summaries.
For anyone serving, recently separated, or married to somebody who is. Written in the order the decisions actually arrive.
Nine critical documents military members need before a deployment
The paperwork that protects a family if somebody does not come home, beyond the SGLI and Page 2 your command already checks.
The truth behind military family survivor benefits
Nobody hands your spouse a handbook when you swear in. This is what the survivor side of the system actually looks like before you need it.
Written for the family rather than for the industry, with real prices and real rights.
How Gold Star families honor Memorial Day
For families who lost someone in service, Memorial Day is not a holiday. A service member writes on the rituals those families use to mark it.
The Veteran and the Liberty stainless steel caskets, compared
Two premium stainless steel caskets built to the same spec. The comparison covers what separates them and which one suits a military service.
Free, and No Email Required
Free Tools, Guides and Downloads
Everything in this section is free, takes no email address, and stays that way. Print any of it, hand it to a family at your post or your congregation, and leave our branding on it.
An itemized estimate for your state, so you can see the shortfall against the VA allowance before anyone quotes you a package.
Open it ›The paperwork that protects a family if somebody does not come home, beyond the SGLI and Page 2 your command already checks.
Read the guide ›Printable checklists, planning worksheets and final wishes forms. Free, no signup, new material added regularly.
Browse the vault ›Every calculator and decision tool on the site in one place, covering funeral, cremation, estate and life insurance questions.
See all tools ›Who built this and how it is checked. Everything on this page was written or verified by Gabriel Killian, founder of Memorial Merits, a Navy veteran and a US Navy Certified Instructor, Missile Defense Systems. Memorial Merits reporting on funeral pricing and end of life planning has been picked up by CBS, ABC and Fox.
Benefit figures are read directly from the VA’s own rate tables rather than from another directory, and re-checked every 90 days because several of them index annually. Partner prices come from each provider’s own site.
How this page is funded. Some links here are affiliate links, and buying through one may pay us a commission at no additional cost to you. The tools, the downloads, the guides and every government and nonprofit resource on this page are free, take no email address, and stay that way. Where a partner pays us nothing, the listing says so. A commission never decides the order of a list or the wording of a recommendation.
Burial allowance figures read directly from the VA rate tables on 2026-08-29, against a VA page last updated 15 December 2025. Partner terms last verified August 2026.
Questions Military Families Ask First
This page is maintained rather than published once and forgotten. If you run a veteran service organization, a state or county veterans office, a university veteran services program or a nonprofit that helps military families, and you belong on it, tell us. Listing costs nothing and we do not ask for anything in return.
