Nebraska Homestead Exemption for Surviving Spouses

Section 77-3506(2) carries the full homestead exemption to a surviving spouse by four separate routes. The exemption is the same one the veteran would have held: one hundred percent of the taxable value of the homestead, with no income limit, no ceiling on the house value and state reimbursement to the county. The first route, subdivision (2)(b), is the spouse of a veteran who qualified under (2)(a): drawing compensation at one hundred percent service-connected permanent disability, or at the total rate through individual unemployability under 38 C.F.R. 4.16. This is the route for a spouse who was living in the exempt house when the veteran died. The second, subdivision (2)(d), reaches the unremarried surviving spouse of any veteran discharged or separated with a characterization of honorable or general under honorable conditions who died because of a service-connected disability. Read the clause "including a veteran other than a veteran described in section 80-401.01" carefully, because it is doing real work: it removes the wartime period test. A peacetime veteran who died of a service-connected disability leaves a spouse inside this route even though that veteran would not be a wartime veteran for Nebraska's other homestead category or for the Nebraska Veterans' Aid Fund. The third, subdivision (2)(e), reaches the spouse of a service member whose death while on active duty was service-connected. Again no period test, and again no rating, because there was never going to be one. The fourth, subdivision (2)(f), is the one that does use the period list. It reaches the spouse of a service member who died while on active duty during the periods described in 80-401.01, without requiring that the death be service-connected. This is the route for a death on active duty in wartime that VA has not connected to service, and it is the only surviving spouse route where the gaps in Nebraska's wartime period list can decide the case. The remarriage rule was rewritten and is now the most easily missed thing in the section. The exemption belongs to an unremarried surviving spouse, or to a surviving spouse who remarries after attaining the age of fifty-seven years. A spouse who remarries at fifty-eight keeps it. A spouse who remarries at fifty-six loses it, and subsection (4)(a) requires them to notify the county assessor within thirty days. Subsection (4)(b) closes the other door: a spouse who has applied and then remarries on or before August 15 of the application year, before turning fifty-seven, is ineligible for that year as well. Fifty-seven is the age at which a surviving spouse may remarry without losing federal Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, and Nebraska has aligned with it. Filing changed in 2026. Until LB803 a surviving spouse filed Form 458 annually and recertified in years ending in zero or five. Section 77-3506(3) as rewritten, and 77-3512(1)(e), now provide that no application is required in any subsequent year for a spouse claiming under (2)(b), (d), (e) or (f). The Department of Revenue guide revised February 19, 2026 predates the act and still describes annual filing, so a spouse should confirm with the county assessor rather than rely on either document alone. One transitional point the Department of Revenue does explain, and which survives the change. Where a veteran in category 4V dies during an exemption period, the surviving spouse receives the exemption for the remainder of that period and then claims in their own right. A surviving spouse who was never married to a veteran with a rating at all should still read this entry. Two of the four routes ask nothing about a disability rating, and one of them asks nothing about the death being service-connected.