Michael J. Fitzmaurice State Veterans Home

House Bill 1008 of 2024 rewrote the admission test and the pre-2024 version is still being published. What 33A-4-25 used to require was an honorable discharge, a residence maintained in South Dakota at some time in the five years preceding application, and income no more than one thousand dollars a year above the maximum income limit for VA pension benefits. What it requires now is that the applicant be a veteran as defined by 33A-2-1 and be eligible for the payment of per diem for domiciliary care or nursing home care in a state home under federal rules. The residency requirement and the income cap are both gone. Residency became a preference instead. A veteran domiciled in the state within the past five years receives admission preference, as does a veteran who is a member of a federally recognised Indian tribe located wholly or partially within the state, in each case contingent on meeting all admission criteria. Preference is a place in the queue, not a condition of entry, and it is the distinction a nonresident veteran with a South Dakota connection needs to know. Because eligibility now runs through the federal per diem rules, the gate is the federal definition of a veteran eligible for state home care rather than a state one, and the discharge and service tests that carry are VA's. Spouses and survivors, where the old conditions survive. Section 33A-4-26 admits the spouse of an eligible veteran with the veteran if they have been married and living together for at least one year preceding application and their combined income does not exceed four hundred dollars a year above the maximum income limitation allowable for VA pension benefits. A spouse may also be admitted where the veteran, otherwise eligible, is institutionalised for physical or mental disability, on the same one-year marriage test. Resident status is not affected by the death of a spouse or by a marriage between two residents of the home. Section 33A-4-27 admits an unremarried widow or widower on four conditions: the deceased veteran must have been eligible for admission, the survivor must have attained the age of sixty, the marriage must have lasted at least one year before the veteran's death with the couple living together except where separated by the veteran's misconduct without fault of the spouse, and the survivor must have been a resident of South Dakota for at least one year immediately preceding the application. That one-year state residency requirement was left in place when the veteran's own was repealed. The department's own application page describes 33A-4-26 and 33A-4-27 without the income condition or the residency condition. A nonveteran spouse, widow or widower admitted to the home is a resident for all purposes under 33A-4-28, which includes the estate provisions recorded separately in this catalog. Paying for it. Section 33A-4-12 requires every resident to contribute to their maintenance, care or support in an amount the secretary determines, which may not exceed the actual cost of care. Section 33A-4-33 lets the superintendent, if there is room, admit and keep a person with sufficient means for their own support on payment of the cost of care. Section 33A-4-22 governs the handling of residents' personal funds. Two rules that end a residency. Section 33A-4-31 provides that a resident on furlough for more than ninety days is deemed to have surrendered the room and goes back on the waiting list on return. Section 33A-4-9 allows suspension for a violation of the rules, with a hearing before the secretary of veterans affairs. Capacity. Section 34-12-35.10 lets the department increase the nursing facility beds at the home notwithstanding the general moratorium in 34-12-35.4, to a total not exceeding seventy-eight.