When Love Lives On: Taking Care of America’s Veterans Act

For more than 20 years, I was a military spouse. Through deployments and work-ups, three branches of service, seven duty stations, and five different states, my husband, Lt. Col. Matt “Cravin” Kincade, and I built a life we genuinely loved. We raised our two sons surrounded by a community of remarkable people who became lifelong friends, and I had the privilege of standing beside Matt as he faithfully served our country.

Like so many military spouses, I also learned that military service isn’t limited to the person wearing the uniform. Every move meant starting over. Every deployment, work-up, and training exercise meant I became the only consistently available parent for our boys. I willingly set aside my own career goals to support Matt’s and to provide the stability our family needed. Military spouses are among the most underemployed populations in our country, not because we lack ambition, talent, or dreams, but because the realities of military life rarely allow us to build careers the way our civilian friends do. We build resilience instead.

I don’t share that as a complaint. I loved our military life, and if I had the opportunity to do it all again, I would still choose it. But I also know now that the sacrifices military spouses make don’t end when military service ends. They shape the rest of our lives.

On November 21, 2019, Matt lost his life in a military aviation training mishap at Vance Air Force Base. A student pilot also lost his life that day, and two military families began navigating a future neither could have imagined.

The day after Matt died, I was required to sit down with a representative from the base for my survivor benefits briefing. It felt like trying to drink from a firehose. There was so much information coming at me through the fog of shock and grief. I knew I wouldn’t be able to process half of it, so I made sure family members were there with me.

That day I learned about the benefits our family would receive because of Matt’s death. I also learned that many of those benefits would continue throughout my lifetime—as long as I remained unmarried until age fifty-five.

I remember thinking that wouldn’t be a problem.

After 20 years of marriage, I couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone else.

Until I met Cally in 2022.

Cally never tried to replace Matt. Instead, he allowed space for Matt’s legacy. He grew to love not only me, but my sons as well, embracing a family whose story had already been shaped by profound love and profound loss. As our relationship became more serious, we found ourselves facing a reality neither of us expected. If we chose marriage, I would lose the survivor benefits Matt had earned through 20 years of military service, including the Survivor Benefit Plan he had faithfully paid into to help provide for his family if the unthinkable ever happened.

For Cally and me, marriage mattered. Because of our faith and our convictions, we wanted to honor marriage as the covenant we believe it to be and to model that commitment for our combined six children. We also knew exactly what that decision would cost us financially.

We chose marriage anyway.

I’ve never regretted marrying Cally.

I have, however, questioned why any surviving military spouse should ever have to choose between honoring a lifelong commitment to marriage and preserving benefits earned through the service and sacrifice of a late spouse.

My remarriage did not erase 20 years of military service.

It did not erase 20 years of sacrifice.

It did not erase the career I willingly set aside to support our family.

It did not erase the countless deployments, work-ups, and nights spent praying for Matt’s safe return.

It did not erase the day my sons lost their father.

It did not erase Matt’s death.

It did not erase the fact that I became his widow on November 21, 2019.

It simply means that healing has become part of my story too.

Why Military Survivor Benefits Shouldn’t End with Remarriage

One of the reasons I wanted to share my story with other military spouses is that most of us don’t know these policies exist until we’re sitting in a room we never hoped to enter. I certainly didn’t. Had Matt fully understood the long-term implications of these laws, I have no doubt he would have been advocating for military surviving families himself.

Survivor benefits are often misunderstood as needs-based assistance. They aren’t.

They are earned benefits—benefits made possible through decades of military service and the sacrifices military families make alongside the service member. Military spouses spend years rebuilding careers after every PCS, postponing professional goals, accepting lower lifetime earnings, and sacrificing retirement opportunities because the mission comes first. Those sacrifices don’t disappear because a surviving spouse remarries.

Neither should the recognition of them.

For our family, current law means that because of Matt’s years of service, my age, my choice to remarry, and the ages of our sons, we will receive only a small fraction of the lifetime benefits his service would otherwise have provided. Once our youngest son exhausts his educational eligibility in May 2027, every benefit earned through Matt’s 20 years of service will end for our family.

What makes that especially difficult to reconcile is that my first marriage ended the only way either of us ever intended it would. We kept the vows we made to one another. Only death parted us.

Yet under current law, had our 20-year marriage ended in divorce instead of death, I could have retained certain retirement-related benefits regardless of whether I remarried.

That isn’t a comparison intended to diminish anyone’s experience with divorce. It simply highlights an inconsistency that deserves thoughtful consideration.

There is another consequence of current law that concerns me deeply.

Many surviving spouses choose not to remarry because they cannot afford to lose the benefits their loved one earned through military service. Others choose to build committed lives together without marrying. I don’t judge those decisions. Given the circumstances, I understand them completely.

But I also believe we should ask whether our laws are encouraging the outcomes we value most. Children who have already endured the devastating loss of a parent deserve every opportunity for stability, permanence, and security. No surviving spouse should feel forced to weigh those things against financial survival. Those are impossible choices, and I don’t believe military families should have to make them.

That’s why I support the Love Lives On Act.

Supporting the Love Lives On Act

This legislation doesn’t create a new benefit. It simply preserves benefits already earned through service and sacrifice. It recognizes that choosing to love again doesn’t erase the life, the service, or the sacrifice that came before it.

If you’re reading this as an active-duty spouse, I sincerely hope you never need to know these policies as intimately as I do. But I hope you’ll learn about them now, because your voice matters. The Love Lives On Act has been incorporated into the Taking Care of America’s Veterans Act currently before Congress, giving our military community an opportunity to help make a meaningful difference for surviving families.

I encourage you to learn more through the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), talk about this issue with your spouse and your military community, and consider lending your voice in support of the families who have already sacrificed so much.

For 20 years, I proudly stood beside Matt as he served our country.

Today, I proudly stand beside Cally as we continue building a life rooted in love, faith, and family.

Those two truths are not in conflict.

Our nation’s gratitude should not end where healing begins.

What can the WAF community do to help families like Gina’s?

Take just a few minutes to contact your members of Congress and encourage them to vote YES on the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, which includes the Love Lives On Act.

Meet Gina

Gina Kincade Piland, M.S., LPC, is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, and the founder of ALIRA Pathways Counseling & Consulting in Edmond, Oklahoma. She specializes in grief, trauma, and relational health, with a particular passion for supporting military families as they navigate life’s most significant transitions. Through her counseling, writing, and advocacy, Gina seeks to promote policies and conversations that honor enduring love and the resilience of those left behind.