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.