§1482a Expenses Incident to Death: Civilian Employees Serving with an Armed Force

Summary

Allows the appropriate Cabinet secretary to pay certain funeral-related costs when a federal civilian worker dies from injuries while serving with a military force in a contingency operation or from a terrorist incident during that service. The payments can cover round-trip travel and set travel allowances for one person to escort the remains to the authorized destination, give a U.S. flag to the next of kin, and give another flag of the same size to the worker’s parent if the flag given to next of kin is not given to a parent. The Defense and Homeland Security Secretaries must write rules to carry this out and should make those rules similar and take the death circumstances and the employee’s service into account. Definitions (short): civilian employee = a federal worker paid under the general pay schedule or a similar pay system; contingency operation = includes humanitarian and peacekeeping actions; parent = defined elsewhere in the law; Secretary concerned = includes the Secretary of Defense for certain Defense Department civilians.