Al Walsh

In a previous video, I talked about the three things you have to prove in your VA disability claim. The third of those three things that you have to prove, there’s a connection between your current disability and your service, usually through an injury or an illness or some other event. The VA calls this service connection. You may also hear some people call it a nexus or a medical nexus. It’s important to remember that you have the obligation to prove this as the veteran making the claim. And it’s also important to realize that the lack of service connection is one of the main reasons the VA denies claims for disability benefits. So it’s important to get this right now.

I’m going to be talking about service connection as it relates to direct service connection, aggravation, and secondary conditions. There are other issues related to service connection that I won’t get into today with this video. But to get right to the point, I’ll say that nine times out of 10, if not more often than that, in order to prove a service connection, you are going to need a doctor to write an opinion letter that says it is at least as likely as not that your service caused your disability.

Now that phrase, “at least as likely as not” is critical, it is the minimum level of certainty that your doctor needs to have in order for the VA to grant your service connection. It doesn’t have to be more than that. It’d be great if your doctor is willing to say it’s likely or very likely. I don’t see those often, but, those are nice. At a minimum, your doctor needs to say, it’s at least as likely as not that your service caused the disability. Now that likely language is very important. The VA often denies claims when the medical opinion says it’s possible that the service caused the disability or the service may have caused the disability. The officer deciding the claim. We’ll often say that’s too speculative as far as opinions go. So the likeliness language is important. Keep that in mind when you talk to your doctor about the opinion that you need

But let me step back a little bit. So why is a medical opinion important in the first place? The answer revolves around the complicated nature of medical causation. What specifically causes a medical condition. You know, even doctors are hesitant to say with certainty that this thing or this event caused a medical condition or disability. Because doctors are so uncertain, the VA is just frankly, not going to take your word for it.

Take an example like migraines, for instance. So if you suffer from migraines, and you can link it to some very specific things that happened in your service. The VA is still not just going to take your word for it. They’re going to need a doctor to say that these, those events in your service are the reason you have migraines today, or rather, it is at least as likely as not, those are the reasons you still have migraines today. Similar for say, joint issues. You can probably point to a long list of injuries you suffered in service. You’re running every day, jumping, you know, all sorts of things. The military is hard on the body, and everybody knows that, but you walk into the VA and showing, you know, the long list of times that you went to sick call, it’s not good enough. You need a doctor to say it’s at least as likely as not that all of these injuries caused the current joint issues today.

So, just keep that in mind. There are other issues with service connection. And like I said, I’m not going to get into those today, but those are things like presumptive conditions around exposure to agent orange or service connection for chronic medical conditions. And obviously I can go into a longer video about aggravation and secondary service connection, but I’ll save those for other videos later. The main thing right now, and it’s the most important thing for the vast majority of VA disability claims is that you have to get your doctor to say that it is at least as likely as not that your service caused your disability. That’s the main point. And as always, if you’re struggling with the VA and you’d like some help send me an email, a text, give me a call. I’m happy to see if maybe I can help you out.

In a previous video, I talked about the three things you have to prove your VA disability claim. The second of those things is you have to prove that you experienced an injury or an illness in your service or an aggravation of a previous injury or illness. In this video, I want to expand on that a little bit and talk about what the evidence will look like to prove that.

Once again, medical records are the go-to record here. If you can show that you were treated in a military hospital, or really any hospital, while you were in the service for a specific injury or illness, that’s probably all you’re going to need. But you probably didn’t always go to sick call. I remember what it was, like, suck it up and drive on. The result is that. Now when you need those records,, they may well not exist. But not all is lost.

You can also submit a lay statement, which is a written statement from you that describes in as much detail as possible. What happened and when it happened. Write all of the facts and circumstances around it and also talk about your symptoms. You really got to go into detail here. Talk about, you know, the pain, lack of mobility you experienced when the thing happened and how your symptomes tracked over time. It’s very important to talk through the consistency of those symptoms in this statement. This is not the time to be tough. You know, I’m certainly not asking you to lie or embellish, but you need to be accurate. The VA needs to know exactly what this thing feels like. Exactly what your symptoms are.

You should also try and get statements from other veterans who witnessed the event happened. If it’s a mental health issue, you can get statements from friends and family who knew you before the incident happened and can describe a change in your personality, mood, temper, everything. You should also try and get your service records. So here I’m talking about anything that can help corroborate an injury or an illness. Things like orders, proving you were on a deployment. There’s usually lots of paperwork to show you were on a deployment. If it’s a jump injury, get your jump log, you know, all sorts of things like that.

Now, another thing to keep in mind when proving that you had an in-service injury or illness is your entrance physical. So if you recall, when you went to MEPs before you joined the military and you took that physical, the folks that gave you that physical, we’re supposed to document make a note of anything that you had at that time, that was preexisting. So if they didn’t note something and you have that something now, then the VA is obligated to assume that you were in a sound condition when you joined. Now, there’s an exception to that. If the VA can show clear and unmistakable evidence that you, that you had a preexisting injury, they can get around this presumption of soundness. But, for the most part, if it’s not in your entrance examination, and then you’re usually good to go in terms of proving that you were, you didn’t have it when you joined.

But even if you do have a preexisting condition, not all is lost. Remember it’s not just about experiencing an injury or illness and service, it can also be about, aggravating, a preexisting injury or illness. So again, all the same things help establish that, your statement from friends and family and so on.

If you’re struggling with the VA and would like some help, give me an email call, text, whatever works for you. I’ll see if I can help you out.

In a previous video, I talked about the three things you have to prove in your VA disability claim. Now the first of those three things is that you have to prove you have a disability right now. This is what the VA calls a current disability. So in this video, I want to expand on that a little bit and talk about what you need to do to prove you have a current disability.

The short answer is you’re going to need competent evidence that you’re currently experiencing some type of injury or illness or disease. Most of the time, this is going to require medical evidence. And unless you went to medical school, the VA is not going to consider you competent enough to diagnose yourself with a specific medical condition. You’ll need to be able to point to somewhere in your medical records or in an opinion from a doctor that says you have the disability that you say you have.

And that’s what the VA means by competent. So if you have something that you believe is a disability, but don’t have the medical evidence to prove it, you have a couple of options. The first thing you can do is make an appointment with your doctor, go in and see them. Describe the symptoms you’re experiencing and see if he or she will diagnose you. If you don’t have a doctor, or if you don’t have insurance, you can roll in VA healthcare. In fact, if you don’t have insurance, you should enroll in VA healthcare as an aside. Once you’re in the VA system, you can see your VA primary care provider about that issue.

Now, if, if neither of those two things is an option, there’s, there’s still another way. And it goes back to this idea of competence. Just because you are probably not competent enough to diagnose yourself, doesn’t mean you’re incompetent in all respects. You are perfectly competent to describe those things that don’t require specialized training. For example, if it’s a TBI situation, you are perfectly competent to describe your symptoms such as your persistent headaches. You are also perfectly competent to describe the situations around what you believe caused your injury or your illness.

When you submit your claim to the VA, you can provide a lay statement where you described these symptoms, describe the injury or the event or the illness that you believe caused those symptoms. Now, the VA has to consider those statements and you’ll likely trigger the VA’s obligation to assist you by providing you a medical examination.

So those are the things you can do to prove you have a current disability. If you’re struggling with the VA and you’d like some help, give me a call or a text, and I’ll see if I can help you out. Links to contact me are in the description below this video.

I want to quickly review the VA’s duty to assist you in developing your disability claim. Now, I need to say up front that I’m only talking about the VA’s regional office decisions. I’m specifically not talking about anything that’s pending before the Board of Veterans Appeals or the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. I’m only focused on the regional office and I need to note that a regional office doesn’t necessarily mean the regional office close to you, but I’m getting off track.

When you submit a claim to the VA for disability benefits, the VA has an obligation to assist you in developing that claim. That’s known as the duty to assist. But assistance can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. What the VA’s actually going to do for you is very limited. And it basically revolves around three things.

First, the VA is going to tell you, or is supposed to tell you if you fill out the forms wrong, if there’s missing information, they’re going to let you know. The second thing is that they’re going to tell you what evidence you need in order to prove the claims that you’ve made. Most of the time, that evidence is medical evidence, or it’s a statement of some kind, or it’s something from your military records. Then the third thing is the VA has to tell you what evidence they are going to get for you and what evidence you have to go get for yourself.

Now, typically what the VA is gonna do for you is limited to tracking down medical records, tracking down service records, and scheduling you for an examination for medical opinion.

Now, how hard is the VA is going to work to gather that evidence for you? It depends. Sometimes the VA does a really good job. Sometimes they totally drop the ball. The problem for you is that you don’t know if they’re going to drop the ball until you get the decision back. And when it lists the evidence that the VA considered and you see something important is missing. And now when that happens, you’re caught up in this appeal stage where at a minimum, you’ve got to submit a supplemental claim, if not go for a higher level review, or even seek recourse through the board of veterans appeals. And that takes a long time. It’s best to avoid that. The best thing for you to do is just take ownership of your claim. If you know that something is important, get on top of it, get the information yourself, make sure you send it to the VA, and get it in front of that person at the regional office, who’s making the decision. That’s the best thing you can do now. It’s not a slam dunk. The VA still makes mistakes, but that increases your odds of getting the right decision the first time.

If you want help doing that sort of thing, give me a call.

So it doesn’t matter what your disability is or how many disabilities you have. There are three things that you have to prove. If you want the VA to pay you disability benefits.

The first thing is you have to have a disability right now. And a disability is really just a physical or mental condition. I like to describe it as something that used to be fine, but now it’s not fine. It’s a very broad category. There are a lot of things that qualify as disabilities. The key is that you have to have the disability right now. One example I like to use is that if you injured your ankle while you were in the military, but it’s completely healed. So there’s no medical evidence of a current problem with your ankle, or you’re not feeling pain down there, then you don’t have a present disability in that ankle.

So the second thing you have to prove is that there was some event or illness that happened to you while you were in the military. Going back to the ankle analogy, any type of ankle injury is fine. It doesn’t even have to be sort of the classic, military injuries. You don’t have to get shot in war. You don’t have to have jumped out of an airplane and busted up your knee. Any injury counts, likewise with illnesses, if you got sick, that can count as well. The key is that this injury or this illness occurred while you were in the military.

The third thing you have to prove is that there is a connection between your current disability and that event that happened while you were in the military. And this is what the VA calls service connection. If your disability claim was denied and the VA said, this disability is not service-connected, that’s what they’re talking about. This third thing that you have to prove pretty much always requires medical evidence. Usually a medical opinion. A doctor has to say that this thing that happened to you in the military or this illness that you suffered in the military caused the disability you have now, or in the case of something pre-existing, it made that condition you have or disability you have worse than it would have been otherwise had you never served in the military. So those are the three things that the VA looks for.

Now, this is obviously a cursory overview. There’s a lot of subtlety and nuance and exceptions in each of those three things, but this is a good starting point. So when you start to think about your disability claim, think about what you need to prove and how you can prove each of those three things.