Posts in April 12, 2026

Military pension affidavits are full of statements discussing events that happened decades or even half a century before the applicant filed their claim. Sometimes the biggest value in those statements is not what is actually stated, it’s the length of the implied relationship. It’s the 1880s and the affiant indicated he was at the funeral of the widow’s first husband thirty-five years earlier. They’ve known each other at least thirty-five years, and given the event they were at, that relationship likely extends back even further than that. And the widow has to have remembered that the affiant was at the funeral–that’s sometimes something in itself. The connection between the affiant and the widow may have simply been the result of geographic proximity thirty-five years ago–or it could have […]