Okay, so you just received a bad decision from the VA on your claim, and you want to appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals. What do you do now? And just clear, I’m only going to be talking about post-AMA Board appeals. If you’re not sure what that is, please go check out a previous video I did on how to tell if your claim is in the old system or the new system.
When you’re thinking about appealing your decision to the Board. First, you have to make sure that you can appeal your decision to the Board. This means you have to have a decision from an initial claim, a request for an increase, a higher-level review, or a supplemental claim. Any one of those types of decisions you can appeal to the Board. Now, of course, when you appeal, you have to use the right form, which is VA Form 10182. (By the way, you should always get your VA forms from the VA website directly). You have to file this form within one year of the decision that you’re trying to appeal. Now, the VA titled this form Decision Review Request, Board Appeal (Notice of Disagreement). It kind of feels like they wanted to call it three different things. Couldn’t make up their mind and just went with all three.
In part two of this form, you have to check a box, letting the VA know which appeal lane you want to use. There are three appeal lanes:
- Director Review Lane
- Evidence Submission Lane
- Hearing Lane
Which land you use depends on what’s going on with your car claim. And unfortunately, how long you want to wait.
In the Direct Review Lane, you will not get a hearing before a Veteran’s Law Judge. And you cannot add any new evidence. You’re stuck with whatever was in your file on the date the decision that you were trying to appeal was made. But you can, and you absolutely should submit a written argument with your appeal. Now you can submit that argument at any point up until the board decides your appeal, but I think you should submit it right away with the appeal. Remember, your argument is not new evidence. That is just you explaining in great detail why the VA messed up your claim.
When do I like to use this option? Well, first of all, you have to have a claim file that is complete. In other words, that there’s just no more evidence that we need and the VA can absolutely grant this claim with just what’s in the file. The second thing I like to consider here is whether the thing that the VA has messed up is a legal issue. And the more tricky that legal issue is, the more likely I’m going to want to take it straight to the board, rather than mess around with a higher-level review or something like that.
In the Evidence Submission Lane, you will also not get a hearing before a Veteran’s Law Judge. However, in this lane, you can submit new evidence. But you have to do it within a specific window. The VA allows you to submit evidence within 90 days after the Board gets your appeal. Now you should be on the ball and submit that evidence with your appeal. That way, it’s all done at once and you don’t have to worry about it. Also, you can, and you also should submit an argument using this option as well. Again, explaining why the VA got your claim wrong.
Whether I think a veteran should use this lane depends a lot on first of all, whether you’ve got new evidence that needs to be a part of your claim. But then it gets really tricky after that because you’ve got to decide, whether it makes more sense to file a supplemental claim and keep working the claim at the regional office a little bit longer, or if this is something that needs to go straight to the Board. It really depends on the specific details of what’s happening in your claim.
In the Hearing Lane, you of course get a hearing before the Veteran’s Law Judge who will be deciding your claim. And that can be a really good thing. You can also add new evidence, but the window is a little bit different. You still have 90 days, but your 90-day window to add evidence does not start until your hearing. That’s good because it gives you time to track down and find evidence for something that may have popped up in the hearing.
When do I think veterans should use this lane? Well, I mean, first and foremost, if a veteran wants a hearing, you should take this lane and get a hearing. That’s the overriding consideration for me, anything else I want to do from one of the other two lanes, I can do in a hearing lane, just as well. Now, of course, I’ll talk to a veteran about what I think the pros and cons are of the Hearing Lane and whether I think it makes sense in their specific set of circumstances, but it’s still the veteran’s decision because it’s the veteran’s claim.
Now let’s talk about the timeframe because that’s another important consideration. I’m getting this information from statistics posted by the board of veterans appeals. As of right now, it is currently taking the board of veterans appeals:
- 305 days to complete an appeal under the Direct Review Lane
- 357 days to complete an appeal under the Evidence Submission Lane
- 497 days to complete an appeal under the Hearing Lane.
So when you’re thinking about a hearing, you have to ask yourself, is the hearing worth the extra 150 to 200 days that it’s probably going to take for the VA to decide your claim.
As always, if you’d like me to help you with your VA claim, please reach out to me through the links on my website.