The message of Gold Star Spouses of America to lawmakers during their second annual Congressional Fly-In on April 21 was clear: When a service member dies for their country, their family should not have to struggle financially in the years that follow.
"Every time our nation sends troops into harm’s way, families understand the risks,” said Tamra Sipes, National President of Gold Star Spouses of America. “What many people don’t realize is that surviving spouses often face financial hardship because the benefits system hasn’t kept pace with what families need today."
Sipes' husband, Robert, died while rescuing children from a house fire in 1995. He served for 12 years in the Navy as a search and rescue corpsman and flew 55 missions.
“He had received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal Award for Heroism for some of the missions that he had done,” she said. The couple’s children were 6 months, 2 years old, and 10 when Robert was killed.
"After they grew up a bit, quite a bit, I started getting involved in some of the advocacy for surviving spouses, and learning more about it,” she said. “There was such a disparity on some of these benefits.”
During their meetings with lawmakers, Sipes said Gold Star spouses advocated for bipartisan legislation aimed at bringing parity to Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) — the primary survivor benefit for military families.
Among the legislation the spouses advocated for on Capitol Hill is the Caring for Survivors Act of 2025. The bipartisan legislation would increase DIC to better align military survivor benefits with those provided to federal civilian employees.
DIC currently replaces about 43 percent of a disabled veteran’s compensation, while federal employee survivor benefits can reach 55 percent of salary.
"We have a huge disparity, 12 percent, which equates to a little under $500 a month, that is for your military spouses versus your federal employee spouses,” she said. “We want this to pass. This would really bring us up to parity with other federal survivor programs.”
Sipes added that many military spouses are under-employed as they follow their active-duty service member from duty station to duty station.
"You can't really establish a career or something that would be stable if something were to happen to them, so you really do not just lose even your spouse, you lose your community when you lose that spouse,” she said.
The Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Improvement Act would also increase DIC by $10,000 for surviving military spouses and families. Introduced by Rep Tom Barrett (R-MI), the legislation is named after Briley, whose husband was one of the first pilots killed in the operation known as Blackhawk Down. As a component of this bill, there was also a Veterans Improvement Act, named in honor of Edmondson, one of the nation’s catastrophically injured veterans.
Sipes believes lawmakers on both sides of the aisle support efforts to bring parity to DIC.
“They support getting us up to parity, because we're not asking for more,” she said. “We're not asking for them to do something that's way outside of what's already there for other survivor benefit programs."
There are approximately 500,000 Gold Star spouses nationwide. Sipes urged the public to tell their representatives to pass the legislation. Approximately 40 surviving military spouses and their children took part in the fly-in.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
