Below I’m going to walk you through your options for what you can do if the VA denies your disability claim. And the information is also helpful if the VA has granted your claim, but it just rated you too low and you want to appeal that.
The first thing you need to know is whether your claim falls under the old legacy system or the new system under the appeals modernization act, also known as the AMA. This is important because your options vary depending on which of those two camps you’re in. I’ve got a separate post on that topic which you should check out here if you aren’t sure about your claim. For right now, I’m just going to talk about your options under the AMA.
To dive right in… after you get that initial decision from the VA, you have three options. You can request a higher-level review, you can file a supplemental claim, or you can appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals. And as long as you do one of those three things within one year of the initial decision, you will maintain your effective date, which as you know is key.
Now, if you requested a higher-level review and that was denied, then you have another year to do one of two things. You can file a supplemental claim or appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals. You cannot request a higher-level review of a higher-level review. That one’s off the table.
If you file a supplemental claim and that gets denied, you are back to the same three options you had from your original decision. You can request a higher-level review file, another supplemental claim, or you can appeal to the board of veterans appeals. And again, you have one year to do any of those three things.
If you appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals and your claim is denied, then you only have two options. And this is where it gets a little different. So you still have one year to file another supplemental claim. Or if you want to go higher up past the Board of Veterans Appeals, you can appeal to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, but then you have a deadline of 120 days from the board of veterans appeals decisions. That’s the only deadline that isn’t a year. And you cannot request a higher-level review of a Board of Veterans Appeals decision.
There’s a lot of nuance and in each of these options, and I’ll try to cover that in more detail in the future. But what I want to say right now is that you don’t have to take these in any specific order. You should do the thing that makes the most sense for your claim at that specific moment in time. For example, if you can keep finding new and relevant evidence, you can keep filing supplemental claims. You can keep pushing this thing for a long, long time. Again, you always have a year except for appeals to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims where you only have 120 days.
As always, if you are struggling with your fight with the VA and you’d like me to help you out, you can reach out to me through my website, and I’m happy to see if I can help.