In this video, we'll be discussing how to prove direct service connection.
My name is Zack Evans, and I am a Veterans Disability Benefits attorney with Woods and
Woods Attorneys in Evansville, Indiana.
So direct service connection is a little bit different from secondary service connection.
Secondary service connection is where you had a really bad back injury in service, and
that is related to your time in service, and because of the way that changed your life
and your ability to provide for your family, the things you normally like to do, you experience
a downturn in your mental health.
You get a bit depressed over your physical ailment, and your mental health condition
as a result of that can be connected on a secondary basis.
Direct service connection doesn't have that intermediary condition, so direct service
connection as I said had its onset in service, and there's three elements that you need to
prove direct service connection.
The first is medical evidence of a current disability.
This is essentially a diagnosis with some limitations.
Second, you need evidence of an in-service disease, injury or event.
Third is medical evidence of a link between what you're currently dealing with now, your
current disability, and what happened to you in service, your disease, injury or event.
A common question that we get is what is a non-service connected condition?
Sometimes veterans will get some information in the mail related to a claim from the V.A.,
and it will say this is due to a non-service connected condition.
Your ankle injury that you got while working on a construction site in the late '90s well
after service is what caused your depression, and that is a non-service connected condition.
All that means is that for that particular condition, you might have met the first prong,
which is medical evidence of a current disability, the ankle problem, but you haven't yet met
the second or the third prong, and for some conditions, you simply may not be able to.
Not everything is related to service, but on your ankle condition, if you don't have
evidence of something happening to that ankle in service or of a link between your current
ankle problem and the ankle injury in service, you haven't met two and three, that's why
it remains non-service connected.
There are some illnesses, chronic illnesses that are able to be direct service connected
by presumption, and for periods of service on or after January 1, 1947, these chronic
conditions that can be service connected by presumption can be done so if the disability
manifests to a degree of 10% or more during the presumptive period.
Now these time periods vary, but these periods of time per condition are set forth in 38
CFR 3.309.
There's a whole listing of those within the CFR, and it talks about the period of time
for each category of illness.
Basically this presumptive service connection relieves the veteran of some of the burden
of proof, those prongs one, two, and three that we just talked about.
Specifically, it removes the requirement that you have to prove two and three, so you just
need medical evidence of the current disability, and then within the time period based on what
the CFR sets out about your particular condition.
An example of that is hypertension.
If diagnosed within one year of discharge, that is eligible for presumptive direct service
connection.
Another example would be diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's disease.
These are examples of presumptive direct service connection due to Agent Orange exposure in
Vietnam.
Now just because you may have been diagnosed well after service doesn't mean you're out
of luck.
Some mental health disorders can lay undiagnosed for years.
However, a good description of life events at the time and lay statements from loved
ones can help establish continuity from an in-service sentinel event to the present day.
I've got an example here to kind of illustrate this because mental health cases are a perfect
example of this type of service connection on a direct basis, but may be well after the
fact.
Tom served in the Marine Corps for eight years in the 1990s.
During service, he suffered a nasty divorce and custody battle.
Tom began drinking unfortunately to cope with his problems and his stress.
Family and friends noted a stark change in Tom's behavior while he was in the military
that has worsened over time.
In 2011, Tom was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and alcohol dependence.
This kind of case is exactly why I harp on telling the vet's story.
It's extremely important.
Don't just flail evidence or pepper documents to the VA or file claims over and over.
You need a focused strategy and a plan of attack for defeating the V.A.'s culture of
denial in this particular type of mental health claim.
You will need expert psych testimony.
You need to have an expert review your service treatment records.
If you went to sick call for some anxiety or you were feeling a little bit down or blue
in service, maybe some life events were tripping you up at the time, there could be records
of that.
A lot of veterans don't recall every time they went to sick call, every time they needed
to speak with somebody, every time they got a sore throat or had a down day, so it may
surprise you what's in your service treatment records.
You also want your post-service treatment records, especially your recent ones that
give a good snapshot of where you are now, and then some lay statement testimony in the
form of written statements from family and friends that can talk about how you were when
you were growing up, how you behaved while you were in service, the way that you interacted
with family members and friends while you were home on leave and then immediately after
your discharge, through your career after service to the present day.
All of these corroborating accounts of what has been happening to you that essentially
helps tell your story, an expert can look at that within the context of the rest of
your records and your medical records and service, and can connect these dots together
and draw conclusions from onset in service through your intervening life events and the
way that you managed stress, and the way that your life unfolded and your reactions to those
things, and you have right there direct service connection.
Just because you may have been diagnosed 10, 20, even 30 years after the fact with a condition
that you strongly believe was related to military service doesn't mean that you can't win that
claim.
It happens all the time, and if you have any questions about your direct service connection
claim, your mental health claim, especially if it's like the example that I just provided
to you, if any of this sounds familiar to you, give us a call.