You know that if you file a supplemental claim, you have to include new and relevant evidence. So, what if you don’t, what happens then.
The first thing that happens is the VA will consider your supplemental claim incomplete. That kicks you over into a different set of rules about what happens with incomplete supplemental claims. And the short answer is that the VA will send you a letter that says you have 60 days to do give them some new and relevant evidence.
If you do not send them new evidence or identify new evidence within that 60 days the VA will send you a letter saying basically that they can’t even consider the supplemental claim. You may think that is a decision that denies the supplemental but it’s not. You won’t even get a decision. Legally speaking, it will be as if the supplemental claim never happened.
If you do send them new evidence or identify new evidence, within that 60 days, now you have a complete supplemental claim and the VA gives you the filing date of the incomplete supplemental claim. The VA will treat it as though you filed a complete supplemental claim the first time.
Depending on your circumstances, how you do this can save or lose your effective date. Here’s an example, let’s say you get a decision denying your claim, and you wait one day short of a full year to file a supplemental claim. And let’s say your supplemental claim didn’t have any new and relevant evidence. The VA sends you the letter giving you another 60 days and you still don’t send new evidence. If that happens, that denial, just became final and if you eventually do become service-connected for whatever the claim was, you won’t be able to get an effective date back to your original claim.
But, using that same example, if you do submit new and relevant evidence within that 60 days, then you were able to buy yourself a little extra time because you had the full year after the decision, plus the time it took the VA to process the supplemental claim form and send you that letter giving you 60 days, plus an extra 60 days.
An extra 60 days might be all you need. Maybe you received that decision denying your claim, it made you mad, so you threw it wherever you throw bad VA decisions or bills, or anything you know you shouldn’t throw away but you don’t want to deal with. And then it gets buried and you don’t think about it for a long time until it’s too late, or almost too late.
Anyway, I hope you found this helpful. If you’d like me to help you with your VA disability claim, you can reach out to me through the links on this page.