By
LISA W. FODERARO Published: March 22, 2008
For some relatives of service members killed in
Iraq and
Afghanistan, the money feels, at first, like an affront, as if the government were putting a price tag on a loved one’s life. Others are thrown off balance by the sudden infusion of $500,000, spending with abandon to assuage grief or finding themselves besieged by hard-up friends and relatives. And the newfound wealth often strains relations among in-laws.
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2008/03/610.jpg Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times
Three years ago, advocates for military families succeeded in winning a significant expansion in survivor benefits, which include life insurance, a death gratuity, medical care and housing and education assistance. But the increases have left some widows and next of kin clearly rattled by the collision of mourning and money.
“It’s like winning the lottery, and your relatives all look at you like you’re a cash cow,” said Kathleen B. Moakler, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “Money makes people do strange things.”
The parents of Sgt. Eli Parker of the Marines, killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, used the $500,000 to finance their retirement, remodel their house near Syracuse and travel to Washington for the Marine Corps Marathon. After Sgt. Dominic J. Sacco of the Army was killed three years ago by an insurgent attack on his tank, his widow,
Brandy,
fielded requests for cash from family members she had not talked to for years — as well as from her husband’s ex-wife and a woman in prison who claimed that Sergeant Sacco had fathered her son.
