Which Nebraska Benefit Uses Which Test

There is no single Nebraska definition of veteran. There are at least seven, they are written in different chapters for different purposes, and a veteran who assumes that qualifying for one programme means qualifying for the next will be wrong often. Start with the rating thresholds, because they are the fastest way to work out what to apply for. Zero percent, meaning any service-connected disability VA has recognised. This opens the mobile home property tax exemption in 77-202.24, the motor vehicle tax and fee exemption in 60-3,185(2), and the extra five points of the employment preference in 48-225(4). All three use the federal definition in 5 U.S.C. 2108 or its equivalent, under which establishing the present existence of a service-connected disability is enough. A veteran rated zero percent is a disabled veteran for all three. Ten percent. The disabled veteran licence plate in 60-3,124, on any number of vehicles, with no plate fee. Fifty percent. The free permanent hunting, fur-harvesting and fishing permit in 37-420 and the free lifetime park entry permit in 37-438(5). Both also open to a veteran receiving a VA pension for a total and permanent disability not incurred in the line of duty, which is a route with no service connection at all. One hundred percent, or individual unemployability. The homestead exemption in 77-3506(2)(a), which is the largest benefit in the file. The statute names 38 C.F.R. 4.16 directly, so a veteran paid at the total rate through unemployability is inside it regardless of their combined schedular percentage. Then the tests that use no percentage at all. Permanent and total, for the dependent tuition waiver in 80-411(2)(b)(iv), which excludes temporary total ratings and expressly includes permanent individual unemployability. Functional descriptions, for the paraplegic and multiple amputee home exemption in 77-3526, which asks what the veteran can do without braces, crutches, canes, a wheelchair or artificial limbs and never mentions a rating. And need, for the Nebraska Veterans' Aid Fund in 80-401 to 80-405 and the county aid fund in 80-102, neither of which contains a rating anywhere. Now the wartime question, which decides more cases than it should. Section 80-401.01 lists named conflicts: the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf War and the Global War on Terror. The gaps are what matter. There is no qualifying period between February 1, 1955 and February 27, 1961, none between May 8, 1975 and August 24, 1982, none between February 27, 1984 and December 19, 1989, and none between February 1, 1990 and August 1, 1990. A veteran whose entire service fell in one of those windows is not a wartime veteran for the purposes that use this list. One entry on the list does no work at all. The Grenada period, October 23 to November 23, 1983, falls entirely inside the Lebanon period of August 25, 1982 to February 26, 1984, so nobody qualifies through Grenada who does not already qualify through Lebanon. Which purposes are those? Fewer than most people assume. The income-tested homestead exemption for a non-service-connected total disability in 77-3508(1)(b)(i) uses it. The surviving spouse route in 77-3506(2)(f), for a non-service-connected death on active duty, uses it. The allied-forces branch of the Veterans' Aid Fund definition in 80-401.03(4)(b) uses it. The employment preference in 48-225(3) uses a similar but separate test, requiring duty during a war or a period VA recognises, with a one hundred eighty day rule for service between January 31, 1955 and February 28, 1961. Everything else ignores it. The service-connected homestead exemption, the mobile home exemption, the vehicle tax exemption, the plates, the licence designation, the recreation permits, the veterans homes, the tuition waiver and the ordinary branch of the aid fund definition all reach a peacetime veteran. There is one published discrepancy in that list worth carrying into a county assessor's office. Section 80-401.01(10) and (11) define the Persian Gulf War as beginning August 2, 1990 and the Global War on Terror as beginning September 14, 2001, each ending on the date "thereafter prescribed by presidential proclamation or by law". No proclamation has been issued for either. The Department of Revenue's Homestead Exemption Information Guide prints end dates of February 28, 1991 and September 11, 2021 for those two periods. Those dates are not in the statute. A second drafting point in the same section. Every period from the Spanish-American War onward is written as United States active duty "or" service with an allied government's forces, except the Vietnam War in subdivision (6), which is written as clause (a) United States active duty "and" clause (b) allied service. Read literally that would require both. The Department of Revenue's guide lists the Vietnam dates as alternatives, which is plainly the intended reading, and no source this catalog has found treats the conjunction as operative. Discharge character is the third axis and Nebraska is not consistent about it. Most of the file accepts a general discharge under honorable conditions: the homestead exemptions, the mobile home exemption, the employment preference, the veterans homes, the aid funds, the county burial duty, the licence designation, the recreation permits, the disabled veteran plate, the Veteran Promise Act. Two provisions do not. Section 60-3,185(2), the motor vehicle tax exemption, requires separation "with a characterization of honorable" and stops. Section 60-3,123, the prisoner of war plate, does the same. A veteran holding a general discharge should expect to be refused on both and accepted on everything else, and the first of those refusals is particularly odd because the mobile home exemption, amended by the same act in the same year, accepts a general discharge using the same definition of disabled veteran. Two further definitions exist for narrow purposes and should not be read across. Section 37-357 uses the federal definition of veteran in 38 U.S.C. 101 for the migratory waterfowl season, and nothing else in Nebraska law uses that one. Section 85-2902 defines uniformed service for the Veteran Promise Act to include the Merchant Marine, the Space Force, the NOAA and Public Health Service commissioned corps and the Nebraska National Guard, which is the widest list in the file, but gates the whole Act on a high school graduation date of January 1, 2002 or later. Finally, one sentence that the Legislature wrote precisely so this entry would be necessary. Section 80-414(5) provides that the eligibility requirements used for the veteran designation on a driver's licence "shall apply only for purposes of such section and shall not apply in determining veteran status for any other purpose". A licence that says Veteran proves that a person cleared one test. It does not prove they clear any of the others. The practical advice is the same one every county veterans service officer gives. Take the discharge document and the VA rating decision to a county veterans service officer and ask which programmes fit, because the officer is free, is certified by the Director of Veterans' Affairs under 80-410, exists in every county under 80-407, and is the only person in the state whose job is to hold all seven definitions at once.