Thank you to Yangc 350, whose comments on another video made me think that I should talk a little bit about how our reserve and national guard brothers and sisters should approach their disability claims.
The first thing to know is that all of the basic elements are the same. You still have to prove that you currently have a disability, there must be some event, injury, or illness from your service, and you have to prove a causal connection between that event, injury, or illness and your current disability. That last one is often called the nexus.
But for guard and reserve members, things will get difficult for you because, unlike active-duty veterans, or even active guard and reserve veterans, you have to prove that your injury or illness was caused “in the line of duty.” That means it had to have happened while you were at drill, annual training, or at some school, and most likely traveling to and from those places. Make no mistake, the VA is going to toss your claim in half a heartbeat if they think your injury was caused outside the line of duty.
So, how do you overcome that obstacle? First of all, keep every piece of paper that has anything to do with your service. Second, when it comes to proving your injury occurred in the line of duty, it’s hard to beat an actual line of duty investigation. I hope your unit does those. Beyond that, you can help prove something happened in the line of duty if the date on your medical records for an injury lines up with your orders, dates on your LES, awards, even a drill schedule is better than nothing. Basically, look for a document created by someone other than you which put you at drill when you were injured.
A note on the illness thing, under the law, there are only certain illnesses recognized as possibly being in the line of duty, heart attack, cardiac arrest, and a stroke. But I think, even if it’s something else, if you can prove it the illness was caused in the line of duty, I think you should push that claim. But only if you’re up for a very long and difficult fight.
Some final notes, if you were called to Federal active duty, for something like a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, during that period when you were activated, you don’t have to prove the line of duty part, the active-duty rules apply, just like they do for active-duty soldiers. But, if your state activates you for a state thing, helping out with floods or fighting fires, nothing that happens during that activation is going to count for VA disability purposes.
If you are in the guard or reserves, I hope this helps. I’m happy to make more videos answering your questions, so let me hear them in the comments. Thanks again to Yangc 350 for the idea for this video. As always, if you want me to help you with your claim, set up a call with me or email me through my website.