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Veterans who put their lives on hold to serve often come home carrying injuries and conditions that follow them for decades, yet the Department of Veterans Affairs claims process can feel like another battle entirely, complete with its own paperwork, deadlines, and medical standards.
Our Veterans disability attorneys at Jan Dils, Attorneys at Law, the nation’s largest Veterans law firm, can manage that process on your behalf from anywhere in the country. You can also try our Veterans disability calculator to get a rough sense of what your monthly compensation might look like once a claim is approved.
Eligibility in every VA disability claim depends on establishing what is known as service connection, and it typically requires three things:
That third element, the link itself, is often where claims fall apart, particularly when a Veteran’s service happened decades ago, when other possible causes exist for the same condition, or when the current diagnosis looks different on paper from the original in-service event.
A Veteran who injured a knee during a training exercise in their twenties, for example, may not develop diagnosable arthritis in that joint until decades later, and connecting the two requires more than simply noting that both events involved the same knee. Secondary conditions matter here as well.
If one diagnosed condition develops as a direct result of another service-connected condition, that chain can be documented and included in the overall disability picture, sometimes substantially increasing the compensation a Veteran ultimately receives.
Veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, radiation, or contaminated water at certain installations no longer have to prove causation from scratch for many related illnesses. Under the PACT Act, signed into law in 2022, the VA presumes service connection for a lengthy and still-expanding list of conditions once a Veteran shows they served in a qualifying location during a qualifying time period and carries the matching diagnosis.
This shifts a substantial burden away from the Veteran, though identifying whether a particular illness falls on the current presumptive list, and gathering the service records needed to establish the qualifying location and dates, still benefits from experienced guidance.
Veterans who were previously denied a claim for one of these conditions before the presumptive list existed may also be able to have that earlier decision reconsidered under the newer, more favorable standard.
A VA claim lives or dies on the quality of its supporting record, and many otherwise valid claims are denied simply because the file did not contain what the VA was looking for. Service treatment records establish what happened during your time in uniform, but they are often incomplete or difficult to locate for older claims, which is where buddy statements from fellow service members can fill in gaps that official records missed entirely.
A nexus letter from a qualified medical professional, explaining in specific terms how your current condition relates back to your service, frequently makes the difference between an approval and a denial for conditions that do not fall under a presumptive category.
Compensation and Pension examinations, scheduled by the VA itself, also play a significant role, and Veterans are sometimes caught off guard by how much a single exam can influence the outcome of a claim they have been building for months.
A denial is common enough that it should not be treated as the final word on your claim. Veterans currently have three distinct paths to challenge a VA decision, and all three must generally be filed within one year of the decision date to protect your original effective date and the back pay tied to it.
Choosing the wrong lane can cost months of otherwise avoidable delay, since a Board Appeal generally takes considerably longer to resolve than a Supplemental Claim or a Higher-Level Review.
A Veteran who has genuinely new evidence to submit but chooses a Higher-Level Review instead, which does not consider new evidence at all, may end up needing to file a second appeal anyway once the first one fails on a technicality that better planning could have avoided from the outset.
Once service connection is established, several additional programs may apply depending on a Veteran’s specific circumstances, and many Veterans are never told these programs exist unless they happen to ask the right question or work with someone familiar with the full range of available benefits:
Dependency and Indemnity Compensation provides monthly benefits to certain survivors of a Veteran, including families of service members who died on active duty and families of Veterans whose death was connected to a service-related condition. Survivors of Veterans who were totally disabled by a service-connected condition for a specified period before death, generally ten years, or five years from the date of separation from service, may also qualify, as can survivors of former prisoners of war who died after September 30, 1999, provided the marriage lasted at least one year.
Children of a deceased Veteran may also qualify for DIC in their own right under certain circumstances, particularly when there is no surviving spouse or when the child meets specific age and dependency requirements. Because DIC involves its own separate application and evidentiary standards distinct from a Veteran’s own disability claim, surviving family members often benefit from guidance specific to this program rather than assuming the same rules that applied to the Veteran automatically carry over.
Our attorneys are accredited by the federal government to represent Veterans in benefits matters and belong to the National Organization of Veterans’ Advocates, a distinction that reflects a specific commitment to this area of law rather than general practice experience.
As the nation’s largest Veterans law firm, we have the resources to gather medical records, coordinate independent medical opinions, and prepare a Veteran’s case for every stage of the VA process, from the initial application through a hearing before the Board.
We do not treat a denial as the end of the conversation, and we bring that same refusal to accept “no” to every claim we take on, wherever in the country our client happens to live. Many of our attorneys and staff have their own connections to military service, which affects how seriously we take the responsibility of representing the Veterans who trust us with their claims.
There is no statutory deadline requiring a decision within a specific timeframe, which is part of why so many Veterans wait months or longer for an initial determination. A complete, well-organized application generally moves through the system more predictably than one that is missing key records.
You generally can, though doing so usually means giving up the effective date tied to your original claim, which affects how far back your benefits and back pay can reach. In most situations, appealing the existing decision preserves more value than starting over.
Generally, yes, since compensation increases at each rating level, and Veterans with dependents receive additional amounts on top of their base rating. Ratings for multiple conditions are combined using a specific VA formula rather than simply added together.
You can file a claim for an increased rating at any time once your condition has worsened, supported by updated medical evidence showing the change. This is a separate process from appealing an existing decision.
Eligibility depends on the type of duty during which the injury or condition arose, since active duty, active duty for training, and inactive duty training can each carry different rules. A review of your specific service record is the most reliable way to determine your eligibility.
Your discharge status can affect eligibility, but it does not automatically disqualify you. In some cases, a discharge upgrade or a formal character of discharge determination can open the door to benefits that would otherwise be unavailable, and this is a separate process worth exploring before assuming benefits are out of reach.
Dependents do not receive a separate rating of their own, but a Veteran’s monthly compensation increases once dependents are added to a claim at certain disability rating levels, typically 30 percent or higher. This additional amount is paid as part of the Veteran’s own benefit rather than a standalone payment to the dependent.
Every Veteran who has been denied VA benefits deserves a team that will not simply accept that outcome. Jan Dils, Attorneys at Law is ready to review your claim, build the evidence it needs, and pursue every level of appeal available to you. Contact us online today for a free consultation with a Veterans disability attorney.
To Schedule an Appointment, Call Us Toll Free at 1.877.873.8208 or Email Us for a Prompt Response.
Jan Dils, Attorneys at Law
