§8109 Beneficiaries of awards unpaid at death; order of precedence

Summary

When a person who had an approved disability claim and filed it while alive dies from some other cause before their scheduled benefit period ends, any unpaid scheduled payments are paid out for that period to people alive at the time. The law says who gets the money in this order: if there are no children, it goes to the widow or widower; if there are both a spouse and children, half goes to the spouse and half to the children; if there is no spouse, it goes to the children; if none of those are alive, it goes to parents or other relatives who depended on the decedent, in amounts set by regulation; if there are no survivors and no burial allowance under section 8134, up to the burial-allowance amount can be paid to someone who actually paid the funeral costs (insurers, obligated payers, or government entities are not eligible). Payments made after death use the basic disability rate in section 8107(a), even if the person would have gotten an augmented rate under section 8110. Except for a burial-cost reimbursement, a person must be alive to get payment and does not have a guaranteed right to it. If a beneficiary loses the right to death compensation under section 8133, their claim stops and any unpaid amounts are then paid to other survivors in the order above.