Maine Veterans' Dependents Educational Benefits

Title 37-B, section 505(2) is Maine's dependent education benefit, and it is two programmes written in one subsection. Treating them as one is how families get told the wrong thing. Who the veteran has to be. The statute defines veteran for this subsection as a person who served in the military or naval forces of the United States and who entered the service from Maine or has been a Maine resident for the five years immediately preceding the application for aid, and who, if living, continues to reside in Maine throughout the duration of the benefits. The veteran must then meet one of five conditions: a total permanent disability resulting from a service-connected disability; killed in action; died from a service-connected disability; at the time of death was totally and permanently disabled due to service-connected disability although the death was unrelated; or was listed as missing in action or a prisoner of war for ninety days or more. The residency requirement runs on the living veteran as well as at entry. A family that moves out of Maine while a child is using the benefit is outside the statute. What a spouse gets. A spouse attending a state-supported postsecondary vocational school or institution of collegiate grade is admitted free of tuition, including mandatory fees and lab fees, for a certificate programme or an associate's, bachelor's or master's degree programme. Room and board are not waived. The spouse is entitled to up to 120 credit hours and has 10 years from the date of first entrance to complete the programme. The paragraph applies to all spouses enrolled in the programme as of September 1, 2007. What a child gets, and this is where the two diverge. A child is admitted free of tuition, including mandatory fees and lab fees, for certificate programmes, associate degree programmes and bachelor's degree programmes. There is no master's degree for a child. The waiver may not exceed the cost of 120 undergraduate credit hours at the in-state tuition rate at the University of Maine campus at Orono, so a child attending a more expensive institution is capped at the Orono rate rather than having their actual tuition covered. And the waiver is reduced by an amount necessary to ensure that its value, combined with all other grants and benefits the student receives, does not exceed the total cost of education. Room and board are not waived. That last condition is the one to plan around. A child holding a large scholarship may find the state waiver reduced rather than stacked on top. Age. A child must be at least 16, must have graduated from high school, and must have enrolled in a degree programme and been awarded benefits under the subsection before their 22nd birthday. If the child could not enrol before turning 22 because of their own service in the United States Armed Forces, they may apply until reaching 26. The director may waive the requirements where there are special and extenuating circumstances that may have a negative effect on a dependent, which is a real discretion and is worth asking about rather than assuming a hard cut-off. Grade point average. The often-quoted 2.0 or C average is not in section 505. What the statute requires is that a school providing tuition assistance report enrolment verification, contact information, semester grade point average, accumulated credit hours and transcripts to the Bureau of Veterans' Services as necessary to administer the programme. The academic standard is applied by the bureau under that reporting regime rather than set by the statute, so ask the bureau what standard it is applying in the current year. The Bureau of Veterans' Services page describes the benefit as a 100 per cent waiver of tuition and all mandatory fees for spouses and dependents. That is accurate for a spouse. For a child it omits the Orono rate cap and the offset against other aid, both of which are in the statute. No rating percentage is used to size the benefit, so a rating filter never hides this entry; the gate is the veteran's status rather than a number.