My Opinion on Knowing Where to Start with VA Disability Claims

If you are a Veteran and put all your trust into another organization or even a Veterans Affairs representative without doing research, you are potentially setting yourself up for failure. Now I am not saying you can’t trust these organizations, but I do know that I trust myself more than anyone else. I also trust that if I want to know something there is a plethora of information available to me on the good old internet. Don’t get fooled, Veteran organizations are everywhere, and a good chunk of them just want a good chunk of your hard-earned monetary benefits. Some are legitimately trustworthy and do have great information, but some just want your money. The bottom line is nobody cares more about your benefits than you do. Even if a company's main motivation is money.

Most importantly, research what you want. Go straight to the source. In terms of VA that would be 38CFR for anything disability-related. Get to know the common terms such as “schedule of ratings”, “fully developed claim”, and “nexus”. If you come across a term, you don’t know…Google it, Webster's dictionary is still viable.

Have an idea of what you are seeking help with BEFORE you ask for help. After all, you wouldn’t seek out the help of a lawyer if you didn’t have an idea of why you wanted to seek counsel in the first place or seek out a doctor without realizing that there is some problem with your body or mental health. Generally, you have some kind of idea where it hurts.

Below are some steps that have helped me out in the past when I had questions about the VA or needed to make a disability compensation claim.

Know your situation and be honest with yourself–Not everyone deserves or even qualifies for 100% disability or the coveted Permanent and Total rating. If you only get to 10% that may be what you qualify for.

Were you on active duty, reserve, or national guard? These classifications of service mean you will have different paperwork requirements. For example Line of Duty letters for part-timers, or NGB22’s vs DD214s.

Did you get out with a clean slate? I.E., the character of discharge – honorable, other than honorable, general under honorable. etc... This could be the difference between being outright denied VA benefits or having to track down periods of service on separate DD214s/NGB22s. This matters when you start looking at dates on medical records.

Are you even qualified for disability compensation for what you seek? Did the injury/illness happen while in service, and can you prove it? Also known as “Nexus” (there is that annoying word again) This is one of the biggest reasons people get fed up with denials. In some cases, all of the documentation is there and for some reason, the VA has blinders on. However, a lot of us didn’t go to the Doc while in and don’t have any kind of proof. That will take some work to connect but it is possible. If you can’t connect the dots, there is a good chance the VA can’t or won’t either.

Be honest with yourself – Most of us know when we are going after something that is a stretch to begin with. If you have to convince yourself it is fact directly related to service and needs to engineer a way to service connect an injury, the VA will poke holes in that claim all day long. There are legitimate issues that come secondary to initial injuries, however common sense and logical reasoning will go a long way toward making sure you aren’t claiming that your big toe injury is directly related to the eye pain you feel in your left eye. If you have to question the viability of a claim and don’t have the proof to back it up, the VA will question it too. If you can help it don’t submit a claim half-finished, do the legwork, and get as much together before you see a representative, it will go a long way toward ensuring you aren’t denied outright.

Lastly, don’t give up and get out of the “I don’t deserve anything mindset” We all know going through any kind of Government process is aggravating at best. I suspect it is part of the reason Veterans will gladly pay someone to do their claim for them, rather than do it themselves or trust a VA representative to do it for them. However, if you have answered all of the questions above and get denied don’t give up, there are appeals processes and higher-level reviews you can do later. If you keep getting denied for one particular injury, it may not happen, especially if you weren’t prepared, honest with yourself, and didn’t meet the qualifications for disability compensation for that particular injury in the first place. If this happens you may just need to shift strategies and focus on claims that can be successful.

The next point I would like to make is to get out of the “I don’t deserve anything mindset”. Stop it…just stop it. The military had no problem using and abusing your body and psyche and cutting ties once they squeezed all of the juice out of you that they could. On top of that, after you left the service, they continued to exist and always will, despite failing recruitment numbers. Go get what you deserve, earn, and qualify for! That injury you keep hiding may not be as bad now, but one day you’re going to sneeze and somehow throw your back out. (I know, I’ve done it!) The longer you wait to get a disability rating, the harder it becomes to get approved.

Remember…YOU SERVED YOUR COUNTRY; NOW MAKE YOUR COUNTRY SERVE YOU!

With love, Matt from Veterans Path Forward!