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The first time Amy Siegel visited the Department of Veterans Affairs to apply for survivor benefits, her husband had been dead for less than five weeks and she was four months pregnant.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas Siegel had survived three deployments to Iraq only to lose his life to a distracted driver 1,000 feet from his parents’ home in Stafford County.

Amy Siegel staggered through grief and court hearings as she prepared to give birth to the daughter she would have to raise alone. But it was a comfort to know her husband’s 18 years of military service would provide a measure of financial security in the form of a tax-free monthly benefit for widows of wartime veterans.

Accompanied by the casualty officer assigned to assist her, she filled out benefits paperwork at the VA’s regional office in Baltimore. A backlog of VA claims meant it could take several months until the pay kicked in, but there was a stopgap: a separate award called the Survivor Benefit Plan that would automatically lower after the VA pay began.

Five months passed. Neither came.

The Army had submitted incorrect paperwork, she said, and it was holding up both payments.