South Carolina / State / 126th General Assembly, 2025-2026
2025 Act No. 5 (S.218) Moved South Carolina veterans home admissions and fees out of statute and into department policy
Added Section 25-11-730. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs shall adopt and execute criteria, policies and procedures for admissions to and discharges from South Carolina veterans homes; shall set and collect fees for residence and services; and is authorised to receive the assignment of any state or federal benefit as full or partial payment of those fees. That is now the whole of the admission and fee law. Read with 2023 Act No. 60, which moved the homes from the Department of Mental Health to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs on July 1, 2024 for homes under a third-party service contract as of May 1, 2023 and on July 1, 2025 for the rest, the effect is that no statutory admission test survives beyond the Section 25-11-720 definition of a South Carolina veteran as an ex service South Carolina citizen discharged under other than dishonorable conditions. Tracked because the conditions a veteran is quoted, an honorable discharge, one year of South Carolina residency and a VA determination of the need for skilled or intermediate nursing care, appear nowhere in the statute, and the one-year residency figure sits against a definition that states no residency period. Those figures can now move without a legislative act.
Progress
Path to law: Bill in a two-chamber legislature
- Introduced Done,
- In committee Done, Senate Family and Veterans' Services
- Passed one chamber Done, Senate
- Passed both chambers Done, House
- Signed by the governor Done, Act No. 5
- In effect Done,
Sponsors
- Tom Young, Jr.
What it touches
- S.C. Code Ann. § 25-11-730
- S.C. Code Ann. § 25-11-710
- S.C. Code Ann. § 25-11-720
Catalog entry
Official record
Read 2025 Act No. 5 (S.218) on the jurisdiction's own record