Military Widows

Barclay Murphy's husband was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. She's been arguing with the federal government about spousal death benefits ever since. 

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Now, you've probably heard the term tossed around, especially if you've ever been in a heated debate online or at the dinner table. But what does ad hominem actually mean, and why should we care about it?

Michael Lee: At its core, an ad hominem argument is when someone attacks the person making the argument, rather than addressing the argument itself. It's a personal attack. Ad hominem is Latin for quote, to the person, end quote, which is fitting because these attacks usually target someone's character, appearance, background, or other personal qualities.

Michael Lee: Rather than the validity of their position. For example, let's say you're discussing climate change with someone, and they respond with, You don't even recycle, so why should I listen to you about the environment? That's an ad hominem attack. They're not engaging with your points about climate science, they're [00:01:00] dismissing your argument because of something unrelated about you personally.

Michael Lee: Another common one, You've been divorced twice, so clearly you don't know anything about healthy relationships. Again, The focus is on the person, not the logic or validity of their ideas. In the first case, somebody could, who doesn't frequently recycle, could have some pretty decent arguments about climate change.

Michael Lee: And the science of it. And second, somebody who's been divorced twice might know tons about healthy relationships. Now you might wonder, why is this important to recognize? Because ad hominem arguments are a sneaky way to derail meaningful discussion. When we attack the person rather than their ideas, we are avoiding the real issue.

Michael Lee: It's a shortcut that can make people feel superior, or quote, win an argument, without actually addressing the complexity of the topic at hand. And there's an ultimate irony to the ad hominem attack. They appear to be arguments from a position of power. Who else would assume the power to name call except the [00:02:00] privileged?

Michael Lee: But they are actually pretty evasive distractions, even retreats from the topics that the name caller considers unwinnable. I'm Michael Lee, Professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest on When We Disagree is Dr. Barkley Murphy. She's a Ph. D.

Michael Lee: in public policy, a military widow, and a mother to two adult children. Barclay, tell us an argument story. 

Barclay Murphy: Fantastic. Thanks so much for having me here. My argument story is a little bit unique in that it's an argument that's not just my argument, but an argument for about 66, 000 military widows. Um, for many, many years, military widows were subjected to.

Barclay Murphy: What is fondly called the widow's tax. Um, it sounds like a really cutesy term for a really bad situation in which military widows death benefits were offset [00:03:00] by dollar per dollar for benefits for, uh, An insurance policy that we had bought and paid into during the course of our spouse's lifetime. Back in 2017, legislation went into place to offset the, the widow's tax.

Barclay Murphy: And so you would get both the death benefits and the full. SBP or Survivor Benefit Plan benefits as well. However, it took until 2023 for those changes to take place into full effect. For those five odd years, six years, military widows got what they called an allowance. So it started off at about 50 a month, went up to about 300 a month to try to fix the inequity there.

Barclay Murphy: Um, finally, 2023, January, the time came that we got both [00:04:00] our full death indemnity benefits and our survivor benefit plans benefits, but there's been no provision to pay any of that back. So my arguments kind of with the, the federal government, with the VA and with the Department of Defense that military widows.

Barclay Murphy: Um, we're subjected to this and while it's been rectified now, we're not really in the position to get back decades of benefits that have been lost to us. 

Michael Lee: Pretend I'm just terrible at math. Sure. Take me through sort of a month to month or year to year calculation. About what these 66, 000 military widows have gone through.

Barclay Murphy: So on average, because you're talking about military widows from everything from the Korean War era up to the current military widows. Um, when I say current, I mean widows from Operation. Enduring freedom and operations in [00:05:00] Afghanistan, Iraq, 

um, 

Barclay Murphy: kind of our modern day warfare situations. Um, on average, the annual payout was around 11, 000, um, per military.

Barclay Murphy: Widow every 

Michael Lee: year. Right. If you have 

Barclay Murphy: been participating in this survivor benefit plan. Um, so that's an average. It really, it varies greatly because the survivor benefit plan was open to any military member. Um, it's like a life insurance policy, an annuity policy. So depending on the military member's rank and their salary, it really depended on how much the annuity was.

Barclay Murphy: Payout would be but on average around eleven thousand dollars So when you start getting into decades, it adds up very very quickly And my personal case over two hundred thousand dollars in loss benefits 

Michael Lee: right and then Take us through the [00:06:00] conflict and what is the it seems kind of obvious and unfair at least listening to you describe the widow's tax.

Michael Lee: And so what is the case on the other side? 

Barclay Murphy: Military widows are kind of a unique survivorship situation. Um, our spouses are kind of on a broad brush stroke. federal employees. If my husband had been a postman and gotten run over by a bus, the set of benefits and the set of, um, death benefits available to me would have been a bit different.

Barclay Murphy: With military widows, um, the, the old saying used to be like, if the army wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one. And it seems to kind of still be the case even after lots of years of, of improvements here. Um, Um, primarily the, the amount, the, what happens when a military member dies in the line of duty is the, the surviving [00:07:00] spouse, be it male, female, doesn't really matter.

Barclay Murphy: It's primarily female spouses, however, are entitled to, to death benefits. The number one benefit is, um, what is referred to DIC or the dependency and indemnity compensation. That money is also. scaled on where your spouse was in their rank and their rating as an officer, as a non commissioned officer, as an enlisted member.

Barclay Murphy: And so that money is on a sliding scale. What happened in the Carter administration. So a few, few years ago there was that, uh, an administration decided that military widows were double dipping. They were getting both their death indemnity compensation And then their, um, their life insurance policy, their S.

Barclay Murphy: B. P., which the S. B. P. stands for Survivor [00:08:00] Benefit Plan. The big differential is that those members would have paid into the Survivor Benefit Plan. So in essence, it's saying that because your spouse was killed in the line of duty or killed in a training accident or killed in some other way that was associated with the military, That you were not entitled to get both the DIC and the SBP in tandem.

Barclay Murphy: They were set off dollar for dollar. 

Michael Lee: So just so I'm following here. Of 

Barclay Murphy: course. 

Michael Lee: So in the Carter administration, some DOD rule or was this an act of Congress? 

Barclay Murphy: I don't know. I'm so sorry. I don't know exactly. It became a D. O. D. rule and we're kind of at the end of the Carter administration kind of winding out of our Vietnam era.

Sure, sure. 

Barclay Murphy: It's also important to note that during this time period that benefits were not paid to the military widows themselves. They were paid to a brother, an uncle, a father. [00:09:00] And so those, those funds were kind of at the mercy of a male family member as well. 

Michael Lee: Wow. Uh, so in this time, there is the death compensation benefit in my terms and then a life insurance policy.

Michael Lee: The death compensation benefit was federally guaranteed. You didn't have to pay into it. It wasn't an insurance policy, the life insurance policy you were paying into. The DoD rule said military widows are basically getting rich on this by double dipping and we need to curb this. 

Barclay Murphy: Right. Okay. And so the insurance policy was offset dollar for dollar.

Barclay Murphy: In real simple terms, if the insurance payout was, say, 2, 000 a month and you were getting 1, 000 in death indemnity, Uh huh. Instead of getting 3, 000 a month, you got 2, 000. Yes, minus it out. Yeah, I'll set dollar per dollar. 

Michael Lee: Right. And so again, I come back to A question of trying to understand the other side in this, I understand the conflict, but this [00:10:00] seems at least from the outside looking in just like a pretty obvious case of injustice and you fighting against the system where the answer of why are you doing this is sort of like, well, because 

Barclay Murphy: exactly because 

Michael Lee: we're doing this, but what do they think they're doing?

Barclay Murphy: Well, it's, it's been a head scratcher for a lot of military widows. We are so fortunate that the legislation did take place in 2023, that we get both the, the full amount of the death indemnity compensation and the survivor benefit plan. But that's a very new thing. We're just, we're not even two years deep into that situation.

Barclay Murphy: What the prevailing sense has been is that we should be grateful for that, and we are all 66, 000 of us absolutely are. I think I can speak very freely for that, but there has been no provision made for any of the back pay at all. So, um, a very small amount in a Department of Defense budget [00:11:00] of 850 billion that would make 66, 000 People very, very happy and really be life changing talking about widows in kind of all ages and all stages of life, some a lot older, some a lot younger with a median age of, you know, late forties, early fifties and there 

Michael Lee: has this controversy or this conflict had a touch point where you have either lobbied for or had an argument with a member of the D.

Michael Lee: O. D. Or military or a Congress, perhaps. 

Barclay Murphy: Absolutely. It took years of work and research and legislation to to turn this policy around when I completed my master's. I worked my dissertation for that on inequities and widows benefits. And we were really lucky with several organizations, including the.

Barclay Murphy: Society of military widows that we were able to use [00:12:00] those facts and figures as talking points, but it did require an act of Congress and lots of legislative, um, sessions, lots of getting, um, our administrative officials on board, getting sponsorships from congressmen and senators, and really beating the pavement for years and years and years to make this happen.

Michael Lee: And what was the holdup in terms of congressional action? 

Barclay Murphy: The holdup always seems to be money, 

Michael Lee: um, that 

Barclay Murphy: there's just not enough money to make this happen. Um, I did a little research before I came in today, um, that the, the pension to vets and military survivor families. Is 0.35294% of our Department of Defense budget uhhuh.

Barclay Murphy: So really a very, very nominal amount. And that's the veterans and the surviving family members. So you [00:13:00] thinking $850 billion, which is the 2025 budget that they would be able to find a couple of million to, to put the compensation in place for our military widows. 

Mm-hmm . 

Barclay Murphy: This is kind of a two pronged, um, issue as well, because I don't know if you're aware that until, um, a couple of years ago, that was part of this legislation as well, that if military widows or widowers remarried before age 57, we lost our benefits entirely.

Barclay Murphy: Um, part of this legislation. Well, hang 

Michael Lee: on a second. Yes. So you, if you lost a spouse in combat. 

Barclay Murphy: Yes. 

Michael Lee: And you were 22. 

Barclay Murphy: Yes. 

Michael Lee: And then you remarried before you were 57. Yes. You lost your benefits, just to be clear. 

Barclay Murphy: Absolutely. Every dime your spouse's retirement, um, any of the benefits, your children would have been able to retain theirs, but they would be completely gone for the spouses.

Barclay Murphy: Um, during [00:14:00] this legislation we got a really good little, um, little tidbit thrown at us, and now the age of remarriage is, 55 years old instead of 57 years down to get down to whole years. So in my case, I was 35 years old when my spouse was killed in Afghanistan. So now 20 years later, it's, it's 20 years of, of not being able to.

Barclay Murphy: Get remarried. Um, I mean, I have friends that have, I have friends that have significant others that are military widows, but it does really put a filter on being able to continue with your life and not be tethered to that level. 

Michael Lee: I want to talk about the phrase and the identity really military widow for a second.

Michael Lee: Sure. Um, because obviously it is a traumatic and tragic grieving experience. And so it's an experiential identity. Um, and it's also a legal class and a class where the government [00:15:00] treats you in a very specific way because you are this thing. According to them, you're a military widow. What does that mean to you?

Barclay Murphy: It's really, it's an interesting phrase. Um, all throughout, Military careers, we access all of our information through our spouse. When we go to the doctor's office, it's not our ID information we're given. We're given our spouse's social security number to access information. We were at the mercy of their careers.

Barclay Murphy: We traveled, we moved, we went place to place, we uprooted. Repeatedly, and then to lose that person in a very unforeseen, tragic way, even in a war zone. I mean, you knew what they were getting into, but then after 20 odd years to have my identity so firmly. And scots and still being a military widow, even when I get our notifications [00:16:00] annually of health insurance coverage, they come addressed to my dead spouse, um, my son, that's in college when we get his insurance claims, their address to my dad, husband, um, when he applies for scholarships and for, um, financial aid, we have to submit.

Barclay Murphy: death certificates and organizations want pictures of him with his dad. The funniest thing that we've been subjected to recently is an organization asking us for current pictures of our dead spouse. I mean, if only we had those, 

um, but there's, there 

Barclay Murphy: seems to be a real disconnect with us kind of being poster children of, um, Surviving, um, poster children of resilience, poster children of how we continue on with our lives and respect and honor the memories of our lost loved ones.

Barclay Murphy: But we're, in a way, we're so tethered to it that [00:17:00] we don't really have a choice except to continue on with that identity. 

Michael Lee: What I'm hearing is that your individuality, even while the spouse is still living, your individuality is kind of vectored through the prism of the spouse, whether it's health insurance or at the doctor or whether you're living in Okinawa or Fort Leavenworth or wherever you're living, it's all goes through that.

Michael Lee: And that is the nature of the quote unquote army wife or right military spouse. 

Barclay Murphy: Exactly. 

Michael Lee: And then that continues after the fact into Widowhood, right? The individuality still vectored through somebody who's no longer who's no longer living. And so there has to be a kind of like regrieving that happens when every letter comes to, um, the person you miss so much.

Michael Lee: And then second, what I'm hearing is that there has to be feel like a kind of continued haunting. There absolutely 

Barclay Murphy: is. I mean, definitely there's always a shadow there. Um, it's become just such an intrinsic part of [00:18:00] my identity that it's hard to kind of separate the two. So when you talk about remarriage and that sort of thing, it's also hard to wonder how that would Kind of go hand in hand with losing that identity and creating a new one, how you kind of balance those two things as well.

Michael Lee: Yeah. Say more about having a hard time separating the two. 

Barclay Murphy: Well, it's, it's nearly impossible to separate the two because everything is still so tied to that. from the benefits we receive to organizations wanting to reach out. I mean, thankfully we live in a place where our, our military dead continue to be honored, continue to be grieved, but it's sometimes awkward to go to your mailbox on a Tuesday morning and open it up and see, you know, uh, a Christmas ornament that some well meaning organization has sent in memory of your dead loved one.

Barclay Murphy: Like, you just might not want to do that that day. [00:19:00] And, um, it's really hard to be able to balance those things out because it's a situation that you don't have any real control over. 

Michael Lee: I understand this at least experientially on a, on a level. Um, I had a son named Sam and he died of brain cancer in 2016.

Michael Lee: And occasionally I'll get letters in the mail to him from organizations that knew about his illness. Um, he got a birthday card the other day from a brain tumor foundation that said, happy 14th. Birthday, Sam. And so these sort of like letters from beyond that come that are so haunting, uh, are really impactful.

Michael Lee: You don't expect them when you're walking to the mailbox. And then secondly, there is a kind of like you were talking about the, give us some current pictures of your spouse who they know full well is no longer living. Right. And my 

Barclay Murphy: case has been dead nearly 20 years. There's 

Michael Lee: a kind of like casual callousness to it.

Michael Lee: When you get letters like [00:20:00] that. 

Barclay Murphy: Well, I think it's impossible for organizations to understand as you're making Milestones in your current life in my case educational milestones the same for both of my kids that submitting Stories about your you know, they won't essays about Memories that my kids had with their dad.

Yeah, 

Barclay Murphy: I'm nearly impossible in my son's case He was 15 months old when his dad was killed. So he has Absolutely. Zero memory. So those end up kind of being fabricated kind of Disney moments to make that organization feel better about the good that we're doing. And that's not to say that we don't appreciate the good that they're doing.

Barclay Murphy: We don't. We absolutely appreciate the. The money that has helped my children, you know, be in college debt free and go on to higher education possibilities. It certainly helped me out over time and succeeding in my educational goals, but it's also a weird [00:21:00] sensation to go through a lockbox and scan in a death certificate because inevitably when you go in that lockbox to pull up a death certificate that shows this.

Barclay Murphy: You pull up a form that says, you know, how he died. And then that makes you open up the envelope that says, here are the autopsy results. And then you open up the little gray velvet bags that have his personal effects in them. So it takes you down a road. Of really, um, like I tumbleweed in lots of ways that it's really hard to separate the milestones that you're looking at doing, the successes you're looking at achieving, um, it intrinsically links that person to those.

Barclay Murphy: And not in a necessarily positive way. 

Michael Lee: Yeah, I get that completely. And I want to ask a kind of big question as we close here about your relationship [00:22:00] to the military widow category identity, the ways in which you stake out individuality from beyond and try to leap beyond that category and the ways in which you.

Michael Lee: Find it necessary to maneuver within the boundaries of it so that your activism on behalf of this note, this death benefit tax that seems so unjust is one example, but there's a million others, but then there's others in which I'm sure you feel like. You know, this is a kind of permanent haunting prison from which it would be nice to escape, not permanently, but right moment to moment.

Michael Lee: So talk about that tension a bit. 

Barclay Murphy: Fantastic. That's a great question. Thank you so much. Um, we're approaching the 20 year anniversary in April and it's finally occurred to me that I can say. No, I don't have to make others feel better about my situation. I just need to make it okay for my family and myself.

Barclay Murphy: I'm kind of going forward. We've had family meetings about it and we're [00:23:00] really going to limit. Our kind of, we call them dog and pony shows of what we're going to do that organizations are there filming, you know, a field of a thousand widows and red, white, and blue sweatshirts releasing balloons. We're saying no to any of that anymore.

Barclay Murphy: We're going to choose very specifically the organizations that we're involved with and those that we support. My husband was a University of South Carolina graduate and was the only ROTC Cadet that was a graduate that was killed in the line of duty. 

So 

Barclay Murphy: we've been really active in securing a scholarship fund there in his name.

Barclay Murphy: We want to continue to impact his legacy there and be involved in that, but that's a very specific way. That's definitely a moving forward situation because We're providing scholarships to students that would not have those opportunities. Um, we are continuing his legacy there. And it's, it's funny to think [00:24:00] about him being at the university of South Carolina, literally, you know, picking up trash in the stadium after football games to pay his tuition and net.

Barclay Murphy: We can have the opportunity to not make someone else have to do that. We're going to be very particular about where our involvement is. We're just going to do the things that, that spark joy in our family that we can laugh about, that we can tell stories about, and um, do it just for ourselves. Be a little selfish at this point.

Michael Lee: Dr. Barkley Murphy. Thanks so much for being on when we disagree. 

Barclay Murphy: Thanks so much for having me. 

Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Cnz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We [00:25:00] disagree@gmail.com.