§1437 Payment of Annuity

Summary

Annuities start to run on the first day of the month in which the person whose pay the annuity is based dies, unless other rules below apply. Payments are made in equal monthly amounts and must be paid by the 15th day of the following month. No annuity is counted for a month when the right to it ends. If a monthly annuity is not an exact dollar amount, it is rounded down to the next lower whole dollar. A child who is an “eligible child” (a child who can get benefits under the law) and is at least 18 and in full‑time school gets special start dates: the annuity begins either from the month the parent died, from the month the child turns 18, or from the month the child first becomes or again becomes eligible, depending on when the death and the child’s 18th birthday happened. If a member’s retired or retainer pay was stopped because the member is missing, a beneficiary can ask the Secretary to treat the member as presumed dead under the rules at section 1444(a). The Secretary may do that only if the member has been missing at least 30 days and the situation would lead a reasonably prudent person to conclude the member is dead. If the member is presumed dead, payments are made as if the member died when the pay was suspended. If the member is later found alive, those annuity payments stop and the total paid becomes a debt to the United States that may be recovered from retired/retainer pay, from compensation under chapter 11 of title 38, or from any other U.S. payment; if the member dies before full recovery, remaining amounts may be collected from a beneficiary who received the payments.