So here's the truth. VA doesn't make it easy for veterans to
get a VA disability rating.
Hi, I'm Neil Woods, the president of Woods and Woods.
Today, we're going to talk about the benefits of hiring a
VA disability attorney for your appeal. Is it really that hard
to file a VA disability claim by yourself? There's really two
ways that to look at this. One is, you know, simple claims and
really complex claims. So, if you have a really simple claim
like tinnitus claim, you know, something is just a one issue
application. Doing it on your own or going to a veteran
service officer, it's you're probably going to be okay. Now,
you have a much more complex claim where you have multiple
ratings you have multiple disabilities you have
conditions that have worsened over the years and already have
a rating or you're applying for TDIU benefits that is really
where I recommend that you reach out to a law firm one of
the reasons that we have been so successful over the years is
we we know the VA rules we know the regulations the legal
exceptions and we understand the VA process a few years ago
the VA was operating under what we call the legacy process and now
they're operating under what is called AMA. AMA is a lot more
complex. Veterans might have filed at one time and they may
have conditions and different claims going in different
tracks at one time. They may be receiving rating decisions from
all these different tracks. It's become way more
complicated for veterans than it used to be. One of the big
things that we we see veterans do is they file the wrong forms
or the forms that they file they put the wrong things on
there. So, what filing the wrong forms or filing the wrong
items on the forms can do is it can really delay until you are
starting to receive benefits from the VA. It could also
force you to file a VA disability appeal which could
take many years. I have a lot of clients when they first come
to me and they're like, look, I have two 50% ratings. I should be
getting a 100% VA disability and you have to
kind of talk to them about the VA disability ratings and how it
actually works. It's it's you can't just add them up like that.
If you have questions about that, right below me here,
there's going to be a link to a page and on that page, we also
have videos and we explain to you how VA ratings and VA math
works. The other thing you should do on our is visit our
VA disability calculator on our website because you can really
play around with your ratings and what you are expecting to
get from the VA and then you can kind of see like what you
think your combined rating is going to be. It can also help
you decide, you know, what ratings you should be aiming
for. Say one of your ratings the difference between 20 and 30%
is going to really affect your combined rating then you
need to maybe put some extra work into that and look at what
the VA rules and regulations are for that particular rating
I'm going to give you kind of a 30,000 foot view here so let's
say you're a veteran you served in Vietnam and you were because
you served in Vietnam you're presumed to have been exposed
to Agent Orange then if you later develop diabetes it is
presumed that it came from your agent orange exposure. That's
actually not the hard part. The hard part is all the conditions
that are caused by your diabetes are now also
considered service connected. Those are what we call
secondary service connected benefits. The reason that
that's important is because when you're filing these
applications, you need to you need to talk to the person
who's helping you and explain to them all of your medical
conditions, not just the ones that you think are service
connected. We have a lot of veterans come to our firm and
they tell us about two or three different conditions they have and then
once we kind of get them to open up a little bit they're
like oh I also have these other five medical issues going on
those conditions are secondary to your service connected
conditions and therefore they are compensable under the law
if you don't fully understand that concept below us there's
going to be a link you can go read more about secondary
service connected conditions
We spend a lot of time on evidence. Evidence is how you
win cases. It's not just a VA disability. Uh this is in
criminal cases. This is in personal injury cases. Any case
out there wants evidence and the VA is no different. So, one
of the ways that we really help veterans win their cases is we
use a lot of different specialists. Here's how that
works. Veteran will come to us. We will request all of their
medical records from the VA. We will request all of their
medical records from the Social Security Administration if they
filed and not just that, we will reach out to all of their
medical providers that we need and we will request their
medical records as well. Once my team goes through all those
medical records, a lot of times what we need are nexus letters.
So, let's say that you're a veteran and you have a cancer.
We will reach out to one of our team of oncologist and we will
have them write nexus letters. If it's a mental health
condition, we reach out to our psychologist. We have all these
teams of people to help write these nexus letters and the
great thing about the people the doctors and medical
professionals that we have working on these letters is
they are also trained in VA law where most doctors are not.
They don't understand anything about VA law. So, they don't
understand how to connect all of these conditions and relate
it back to the time in service. Once we get all the information
and we always create what we call a case plan and they're
unique to every veteran and that's we get in all your
evidence, it really gives us this road map of how you're
going to win your claim. Another reason that I really
suggest reaching out to a law firm is back pay. I've seen
clients that missed out on 10 years of back pay because they
simply went to somebody who didn't understand how to
preserve effective dates and then not just preserving
effective dates. When my team goes through all of the medical
records in every one of your rating decisions that you have
ever received. We look at it and we just we almost always
determine that the effective date can go back further than
what the VA said. That can amount to tens of thousands of
dollars. One of the things that almost everyone of my clients
have in common is before they gave my law firm a call. They
went to a VSO and they use these VSOs for years and they
were in this just never ending cycle of filing claims and
having their claims denied. I can't tell you how many times I
have new clients come to me and we look at their old aims and I
see what their Veteran Service officers did. Their Veteran
Service officers did not preserve their old effective
dates and if you're going to a VSO and they are not spending
time looking at your effective dates, you're going to be out a
lot of money.
Our big focus here is for veterans that can no longer
work. Um and the type of cases we're taking on those are
really total disability individual unemployability.
Those are cases for veterans that can no longer work from
their service connected disabilities.TDIU benefits,
they pay the same as 100% VA disability rating
but veterans are not required to obtain a 100% VA disability
rating. The other types of cases that we take are what we
call DIC. These are cases for veteran or for widows of
veterans and their spouses so the veteran has to pass away
from a service connected disability and then their
spouse is eligible for DIC benefits because we work on
this this really narrow areas of VA disability law we we
offer veterans referrals to other law firms and here's how
that works we have law firms all over the country and each
one of them likes to work on little specific areas of VA law
and if we can't help you, we will find you someone that
will. It's great that these benefits exist for veterans but
it's unfortunate how complicated the process has
become for veterans to obtain the benefits that they deserve
because they served our country. In an ideal world, I
wouldn't be doing this job. Veterans wouldn't be needing
lawyers to obtain the benefits that they deserve but
unfortunately, that's not the world we live in and I really
do feel that hiring an attorney to win your VA disability
appeal is not only helpful anymore but feel that it's
almost necessary. You can learn more about the VA Disability
Benefits Appeals Process by following the links in the
description below here and if you have any more questions,
please feel free to ask them below in the comments. My staff
will be more than happy to answer them for you. Don't
forget you can always go to our website WoodsLawyers.com. We
have all kinds of information for veterans about just on just
about every single topic out there you can think of and it's a
really educational platform of videos, links to forms,
everything that you can use to win your VA disability claim
and if you're wanting to talk about your appeal or filing VA
disability benefits, feel free to hit the free consultation
button and fill out the contact form and one of my staff
members will give you a call. If you want to talk to us
today, our phone number is 1-800-544-2108
1-800-544-2108