The Indignity of Death, and then this.

Unbelievable, after how this family has kept quiet all this time...
Pay them already! It's the least we can do since justice won't be served.

WASHINGTON — Family members of Glen Doherty, a C.I.A. contractor and a former Navy SEAL who was among four Americans killed in the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, said they felt a sense of closure when they were told last December that the agency had finally agreed to pay Mr. Doherty’s death benefits.

“It was such a great Christmas gift that all this hard work and time and energy that we put in was finally done,” said Kate Quigley, Mr. Doherty’s sister, of the family’s effort in fighting for the funds. “We felt like it was honoring his name and his legacy.”

But a year later, the Doherty family has yet to see any federal money. Bureaucratic delays continue, even as the C.I.A. and Congress are now in agreement that paying the death benefit is the right thing to do.
...
Mr. Doherty’s family members say he did not realize that the life insurance package he was legally required to buy from a private provider as a C.I.A. contractor would not pay death benefits — beyond funeral costs — if the deceased had no spouse or offspring. Mr. Doherty was single and did not have any children.

“An injustice has been done in his name,” Mrs. Quigley said in a recent telephone interview. “Seventeen years, he devoted his life to protecting this country.”

Of course, you could argue: a contract is a contract and he signed it. Or, more thoughtfully, that insurance benefits are meant to provide for survivors in need of maintenance in his absence, not to benefit extended family members he was not obligated to provide for.*

But it seems kind of a rip to mandate he purchase a product that would not benefit him unless he took on dependents; why obligate those people to pay premiums? (I guess there too, you're covering the "loose seeds", the men who reproduce without knowing or reporting it, until the dependent is in need of care after his death. ? )