The Survivor Benefit Plan is a Department of Defense sponsored and subsidized program that provides up to 55 percent of a service member's retired pay to an eligible beneficiary upon the death of the member. The program provides no-cost automatic coverage to members serving on active duty, and reserve component members who die of a service connected cause while performing inactive duty training. In addition, active duty members can purchase coverage upon retirement and reserve component members can elect coverage when they have 20 years of qualifying service for reserve retired pay.
For more details, select the topic below that you are interested in. We recommend that everyone reads the Overview, Base Amount, and Costs and Benefits, as a minimum.
