Massachusetts Veterans’ Annuity

Section 6B pays an annuity of $2,500 a year, in one payment on August 1, in addition to any other aid to which a veteran is entitled. It has four routes and the fourth is the one most people in Massachusetts know it by. The blindness route is defined by acuity rather than by rating. A veteran with permanent impairment of vision of both eyes at central visual acuity of 5/200 or less in the better eye with corrective glasses, or more than 5/200 with a field defect contracting the peripheral field to a widest diameter subtending no more than twenty degrees in the better eye, is paid so long as the blindness exists. Note that 5/200 is a harsher threshold than the 20/200 used in the motor vehicle excise exemption in the same body of law. The paraplegia route asks for permanent paralysis of both legs and the lower body from traumatic injury to the spinal cord or brain sustained through enemy action or accident in service, or from malaria, anaemia, other disease, tumours or poisoning producing similar signs and certified by VA as service connected. Two conditions are expressly carved out, and the words are those of the statute: paraplegia resulting from locomotor ataxia and other forms of syphilis of the central nervous system, and chronic alcoholism. Those exclusions were drafted in another era and they are still the law. The third route is a rating route, and it is narrower than it first appears. A veteran who has lost both legs, or is otherwise determined to be 100 per cent disabled by VA as a result of enemy action or an accident certified by VA to be service connected, is paid. The qualifier does real work: the total disability has to trace to enemy action or an accident, so a veteran rated 100 per cent for a disease process may not be inside this paragraph even though the percentage matches. The fourth route is the Gold Star route. The parents and surviving spouse of a deceased member of the armed forces whose death occurred as a result of injury sustained or disease contracted during active service in time of war or insurrection or combat are paid $2,500 a year. No rating, and no disability. That paragraph changed recently and the change is easy to miss. Until July 1, 2025 it read "the parents and surviving spouse, provided that surviving spouse does not remarry". Section 44 of chapter 9 of the Acts of 2025 struck the remarriage proviso, effective July 1, 2025. A surviving spouse who remarried, and who was told the annuity was gone, should apply again. Payments run from the date of application, which makes applying promptly worth real money. But the Gold Star paragraph carries a retroactivity rule the other three do not: the first payment is retroactive to the applicant's initial date of eligibility where the deceased member or the applicant was a Massachusetts resident at the time of death and the applicant is a resident at the time of application. The initial date of eligibility is the later of the date of death, or July 1, 1998 for parents and November 11, 2005 for a spouse. The amount has moved twice in two years. It was $2,000 until the HERO Act raised it to $2,250 effective July 1, 2024, and then to $2,500 effective July 1, 2025. Any guide printing $2,000 is two increases behind. The last paragraph is the sleeper provision. An annuity payment under this section shall not constitute income in any application or formula used by the commonwealth or a political subdivision to determine eligibility for a state-funded or state-provided programme or service. The exception is where not counting it would, under federal law, prohibit eligibility or negatively affect the recipient's benefits, and in that case the commonwealth is directed to seek a federal waiver. So the annuity does not push a recipient off MassHealth, fuel assistance or a housing programme. Proof runs through the Secretary of Veterans' Services under section 6C, who examines the evidence of service and disability and certifies to the comptroller, and the annuity is then paid by the commonwealth from the veterans' services fund, subject to appropriation. One piece of housekeeping a reader may run into. Section 6A, which carried a related annuity, was repealed by section 114 of the HERO Act in 2024, and section 6C still refers to "sections six A and six B". The cross-reference is to a section that no longer exists.