I have been a member with USAA since 1974. Yes, I will agree that USAA's ""basic"" services provided by USAA are 4-5 Star. I must highlight the 'situational ethics' that this company has especially when dealing with deceased family members. This is an extremely sad story in how USAA treats long time USAA members.\r
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BLUF: Jurisprudence and legal precedence is not a strong suite of USAA.\r
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In 27 June 2010 our son passed. He was originally injured in an automobile accident in 2004. USAA accomplished a settlement to include setting up a 'Special Needs Trust' (SNT) for him in Nevada. This SNT was set up and filed through the Nevada Court system being completed in March 2006\r
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USAA decided to stop all payments from their own version or reading from their SNT in April 2011. This 'stop payment' was based on paperwork I was requested to sign by USAA in April 2006. The reason I was given by USAA was this paperwork was required to get payments started for his SNT. The paperwork I signed in April 2006 was not filed with the Nevada Court Approved documents nor was it reviewed/approved by the USAA Nevada appointed legal counsel.\r
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To date, these are issues USAA has failed to bring positive closure to our SNT problem.\r
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1. USAA has done everything they can do to prevent payment of the SNT. By dragging this SNT and payment issue out, helps to continue our pain from the loss of our son. Our son passed over three years ago, yet USAA is not putting their 'best foot forward'. Their continuing stall tactics is doing nothing to help our family bring positive closure to his untimely death. If this was truly a company run by former military personnel, this SNT and loss issue would have been resolved as soon as the issue came to the forefront of senior management.\r
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2. All of our communications with USAA in 2011 were with low level functionaries in USAA Member Relations. A specific low level functionary in USAA Member Relations, made a serious mistake in what USAA Company Policy is and this error reversed USAA initial response to what our family was told. This failure by USAA is absolutely amazing that such a sensitive issue would be executed by an employee so improperly trained and without oversight from management. Since this point in 2011, this same ""professional"" employee that made this ""mistake"" has been in charge of our file. At no time did a USAA supervisor or USAA senior level manager take charge of our case, contact us (by phone, email or mail) and bring positive closure to our case.\r
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3. Every time we asked our USAA employee for a specific name of an employee in the legal department or the employee's supervisor handling our case, here was the response:\r
a. Lawyer/law firm - ""Our legal section has stated...""\r
b. Supervisor - ""My supervisor has stated...""\r
At no time could our family get a straight answer from this ""USAA employee"".\r
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USAA has failed to acknowledge that the legally filed SNT (which their legal fiduciary in Las Vegas company set up and filed with the Nevada Court System) supersedes their internal company documents and requirements.\r
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We have had to retain legal counsel. We also have gone to the Nevada Division of Insurance. USAA's response to the Nevada Division of Insurance on 13 February 2013, was that USAA has retained outside counsel. We are approaching a month since USAA's response without closure.\r
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Again, USAA does great work with the basic issues of Banking, Insurance, and Investing. When it comes to more difficult issues such as SNT's to include order of succession and taking care of members, be prepared for frustration and the lack of common sense.\r
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