hi welcome to cck live under five i'm bethany cook and today i'm going to go
over the bilateral factor what it is and how it might affect your disability rating
the bilateral factor refers to when a veteran has service-connected disabilities that affect
both arms both legs or paired skeletal muscles so it's meant to recognize the limitations caused by
these disabilities and how having disabilities in both legs both arms or paired skeletal muscles can
additionally impact a veteran so an example where the bilateral factor would apply
i would be a veteran who has a condition limiting the use of their left leg and then develops
a condition in their right ankle as well because this veteran has service-connected disabilities in
both legs then the bilateral factor applies so for the bilateral factor to apply it's important to
know that you must have service-connected disabilities with one on each side
for example the bilateral factor would also apply if a veteran has a service-connected left-wrist
disability as well as a service connected right elbow condition
in any example the veteran doesn't have to have the same injury on each side so in that example
that i just said with a left wrist condition and a right elbow condition it can be left
wrist arthritis and right elbow fracture residuals they don't have to be the same
disability they just have to be on each side in order to qualify for the bilateral factor
but the conditions do have to affect either both upper extremities or both lower extremities
not one of each so an example where it wouldn't apply would be if a veteran
has a service connected left leg injury as well as a service connected right arm injury
in this case the veteran wouldn't qualify for the bilateral factor
as it does not apply to a combination of a lower and upper extremity condition
so we've talked about when the bilateral factor applies so now i'll go over what it means if
the bilateral factor applies to your service connected disabilities then it results in a
slight boost to your combined disability rating which might affect your compensation payment
essentially the bilateral factor serves to account for the additional limitation
having both your upper or lower extremities impacted causes
according to va's regulation they state about the bilateral factor that the
ratings for the disabilities of the right and left sides will be combined as usual
and 10 of this value will be added before proceeding with further combinations
so va math can get uh pretty complicated um but essentially a 10 percent rating
gets added to the existing rating for the bilateral condition by using va's math
so to put that in an example if a veteran has a service connected right shoulder condition
rated at 20 disabling and a service connected left elbow condition at ten percent disabling
before the bilateral factor applies uh those conditions combined to a combined rating of
twenty eight percent the bilateral factor would then call for you to take 10 of that 28 because
in this example um you have two uh upper extremity conditions service connected on each side so you
would get 2.8 percent uh by taking 10 of that 20 and then you add that to the 28 percent you got
before so that would equate to your combined rating being 30.8 rounded up to 31 percent
once you've done that then readings for other service connected disabilities will be combined
to the total bilateral rating after the 10 increase has been calculated that is all i
have today on the bilateral factor thank you for tuning in and i hope this information was helpful
but for more information on va benefits you can check out our website or our other videos
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