Kentucky Veterans' Personal Loan Program (statute with no visible program)

This entry exists to answer a question rather than to offer a benefit, because KRS 40.650 is repeatedly cited in lists of Kentucky veteran benefits and there is no evidence of an operating program behind it. What the statute says. A veterans' personal loan program trust fund is established to oversee and administer funds under the Veterans' Personal Loan Program. To be eligible, an applicant must be a resident of, and living in, the Commonwealth on the date of application, and must be a veteran who served in the active Armed Forces including the Coast Guard and was released, separated, discharged, or retired under honorable or general conditions. The fund shall lend a qualified veteran, or a deceased veteran's unremarried spouse, not more than ten thousand dollars for the purchase of a home, business, or business property; the education of the applicant or the applicant's spouse; the payment of family medical or funeral expenses; or the consolidation of debt. It shall lend a qualified child of a veteran, or that child's parent or guardian, not more than ten thousand dollars for the education of that child, who must be under twenty-seven, at a university, junior college, vocational training institute, or nonpublic school admitting children from preschool through grade twelve. Ten thousand dollars is a lifetime ceiling on total indebtedness to the fund, not a per-loan limit. The term of a loan may not exceed ten years. "Qualified" is defined circularly, as having met loan conditions established by an administrative regulation promulgated by the department, and subsection (5) directs KDVA to promulgate the regulations necessary to carry out the section. What could not be found. The section was created by 2006 Ky. Acts ch. 108 and has not been amended since. A search of the Kentucky Administrative Regulations turned up no implementing regulation, and KDVA's benefits pages and its own Summary of Kentucky Military and Veterans Benefits do not mention a personal loan program, a loan application, or a contact for one. Because eligibility depends entirely on conditions that a regulation was supposed to establish, a statute without that regulation has nothing to apply under. The honest reading is that this is authorizing legislation that was never stood up, or that operated and has since lapsed. It is recorded here so that a veteran who encounters KRS 40.650 in a benefits list knows what to expect before spending time on it. If you want to test it, ask a KDVA Veterans Benefits Field Representative directly rather than working from the statute. They are free, located across the Commonwealth, and are the people who would know whether the fund has ever made a loan. A veteran looking for an actual Kentucky home loan advantage should look at the federal VA guaranty rather than here, and one in financial distress should look at the Kentucky Homeless Veterans Program.