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Injured on State Active Duty: Paid Status Continues at Your Regular Rate — Offset by Other Disability Income

A National Guard officer, soldier or airman temporarily or permanently disabled as a direct result of an injury or disease arising in the line of duty while on state active duty may, at the Governor’s discretion, remain on paid state active duty status until released by a competent medical authority. Pay is maintained at the regular active duty rate, reduced by workers’ compensation, Social Security and other federal or state-financed disability payments — but not by payments for medical care.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

A National Guard officer, soldier or airman temporarily or permanently disabled as a direct result of an injury or disease arising in the line of duty while on state active duty may, at the Governor’s discretion, remain on paid state active duty status until released by a competent medical authority. Pay is maintained at the regular active duty rate, reduced by workers’ compensation, Social Security and other federal or state-financed disability payments — but not by payments for medical care.

What it's worth: Continued state active duty pay at your regular rate, net of other disability income

  • No fixed amount exists. The benefit is the member’s own regular rate of active duty pay, so it differs by rank and by time in service.
  • It is a continuation of pay, not a lump sum and not a pension. It runs until a competent medical authority releases the member to normal activities, or the Governor relieves them from state active duty status.
  • It is expressly reduced by workers’ compensation insurance, Social Security benefits and other federal or state-financed disability programmes designed to supplement income, so the net figure can be much smaller than the gross.

Who is entitled to it

  • Continued paid status runs to the injured member.
  • You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

Deadline: At the time of the injury, or the onset of the disease
  1. 1Get the line of duty determination made at the time. The subsection turns on an injury or disease "arising out of the performance of an act in the line of duty while on state active duty", and that finding is what everything else rests on.
  2. 2Note what the duty status has to be. This is STATE active duty — a governor-ordered activation for protecting lives and property, disaster relief or humanitarian work, preventing or suppressing riot or civil disorder, enforcing the laws of the Commonwealth, or a similar purpose.
  3. 3Understand the discretion. The words are "at the discretion of the Governor", so this is not an entitlement that runs on its own; it is a status the state may keep you in.
  4. 4Expect the offset and plan around it. Compensation is reduced by workers’ compensation, Social Security and other federal or state-financed disability payments. It is NOT reduced by payments for medical care, which is the one carve-out in the subsection.
  5. 5There is a trap for members supporting a state mission while on federal pay. Where the Governor orders a member to support a state active duty mission while they are entitled to Title 32 federal pay, they receive the powers, immunities and benefits of state active duty — but no additional pay, and KRS 38.235 is switched off for them.
  6. 6Keep the medical release. Paid status runs until a competent medical authority releases you to return to your normal activities, so that document is what ends it.
Form
Line of duty determination through your chain of command
File with
Department of Military Affairs, Kentucky National Guard
No renewal
Once granted it does not need renewing.
CorrectionThis is not a lump-sum disability award, and it should not be filed alongside the fixed state payments other jurisdictions make to their Guard. It is continued PAY at the member’s own regular active duty rate, discretionary, and offset pound for pound by workers’ compensation, Social Security and other public disability income. Someone told they will receive a set state disability sum for a state-duty injury here is being told about a benefit this section does not create.
Worth knowingThe one thing that does not reduce the payment is medical care. The subsection says final compensation shall not be reduced by payments for medical care, so treatment paid for elsewhere does not erode the wage replacement.
Known gapKRS 38.235, which accepts the workers’ compensation law for Guard members and provides for direct payment of benefits, was not read this session. How the two interact in practice — and in particular the order in which claims should be made — is therefore unverified.

Sources

Why only one source type: The provision sits entirely in one subsection of one statute, read in full this session. The Department of Military Affairs publishes its own claim procedure and the veterans department’s host is edge-blocked from here, so no form or processing detail is claimed.

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.