Let’s talk about how VA appeals can affect the effective date of your VA disability claim. Not all the things I’ll mention are technically appeals, but it’s a convenient shorthand. So we’ll use it. Let’s take a veteran, and we’ll call him Clyde. Clyde filed a VA claim on June 2, 2019, and the VA sends him a decision on October 21, 2019, denying his claim. Clyde has three options. He can file a higher-level review, a supplemental claim, or appeal to the Board of Veteran’s Appeals. As long as he does any one of those things before October 21, 2020, he will keep his effective date of June 2, 2019.
So Clyde files a Higher-level review on December 1, 2019, and gets a decision back on April 18, 2020, with another denial, now he has two options. He can file a supplemental claim or appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals within one year. If he does either of these things within one year, he will keep his effective date of June 2, 2019. Clyde cannot file a higher-level review of a higher-level review.
But let’s switch it up. Let’s say Clyde filed a supplemental claim on December 1, 2019, and got a decision back on April 18, 2020. So now the higher-level review is back on the table, as well as another supplemental claim and an appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals. And he has to do one of those things before April 18, 2020.
What if Clyde misses the one-year deadline, and the next time he files anything on the claim is April 25, 2021. At this point, a higher-level review and an appeal to the Board of Veteran’s appeals is off the table. He can file a supplemental claim, but because he waited over a year, Clyde’s effective date is now April 25, 2021.
I want to pause here because this sometimes trips people up. As long as you file your supplemental claims within one year of each decision, you can keep your original effective date alive. You have to meet the requirements of a supplemental claim and have new and relevant evidence, but you get the idea. As soon as you let one year pass, you can still file a supplemental claim, but now your effective date is the date of that supplemental claim.
Alright, so what about the Board of Veteran’s Appeals. Let’s say that after the VA denied Clyde’s supplemental claim on April 18, 2020, Clyde files an appeal to the Board of Veteran’s Appeals on April 15, 2021. And the VA makes a decision on June 3, 2022, finally granting his claim. However, because Clyde always took one of his options to challenge the VA’s decision within one year of each new decision, he keeps his effective date all the way back to June 2, 2019.
And he can keep going, from a Board decision, Clyde can file a supplemental claim within one year if he didn’t like the board decision. Or he can appeal to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Now for the Court, he has to file that appeal within 120 days.
I hope that helps. If you want me to help you with your VA disability claim, you can reach out to me through my website.