VA Appeals Process Timeline.
If you have a claim for disability benefits through the VA, you're probably wondering
what that timeline is going to look like.
Hi, I'm Lori Underwood.
I'm a Veterans disability attorney with Woods & Woods.
Okay, I've flipped the board, so we are starting from you got your statement of the claim.
You filed your Form Nine within 60 days, and so the next step is for the BVA to pick up
your claim.
Now you have two options once you file your Form Nine.
And the Form Nine is a document which requests for your claim to be certified to the Board
of Veterans Appeals, which is who I refer to as the BVA.
You can have an in-person hearing to where you can travel to see a judge.
If you have a representative, have that representative with you, and the judge will take up a hearing
and hear your claim.
You can also elect to waive an in-person hearing, and send your case and then your evidence
on to the BVA for review, in which case they will take it up, look at it and make a decision.
Now, before we got ahead of ourselves, before we get to the BVA, there's a couple of different
documents that you're going to expect.
First of all, after you file your Form Nine, you're going to expect a certification letter.
And what that letter is telling you is that they've certified your appeal to the Board
of Veterans Appeals.
It's not yet been placed on the docket of a judge, but it's moved on from the regional
office to the BVA.
Following a certification letter, at some point you should receive a docket letter.
Now what a docket letter tells you is that your appeal has been placed on the docket
of a judge at the BVA, and that docket letter should also tell you that you have 90 days
to submit any additional evidence you want the BVA to review.
And go ahead and get that evidence in before they look at your claim.
The docket letter is also sometimes referred to as a 90 day letter, because of that language
that tells you you have 90 days.
So you get all of your evidence in and you've sent everything you think that proves your
claim to the BVA judge, and then the BVA is going to assign that administrative law judge
to review your case and they're going to look at all the evidence.
They're going to make a decision, and they're going to issue a BVA decision out to you.
That decision may do, probably three things with your claim.
The BVA judge may grant your claim.
The BVA judge may deny your claim, or the BVA judge may remand your claim.
Remands are very common, and what a remand means is that the judge thinks that there's
not enough evidence for him to decide your claim, so he's going to send it back to the
regional office for them to take up some more development.
Maybe do exams, maybe request records.
The decision will tell you why they're asking for a remand.
If you get a grant from the BVA judge, then you should expect a rating decision to follow
that BVA decision.
The same process starts over again when you get that rating decision.
Check and make sure you think the effective date is correct.
Check and make sure you think the rating is correct.
If there's anything about that rating decision at all that you disagree with, you file a
notice of disagreement which we just discussed on our previous board.
If you get a denial from a BVA judge, you do not expect a rating decision on that.
There's not going to be any further action taken on that claim, unless you continue your
appeal, which we'll talk about in just a moment.
If you get a remand, and that the judge is sending it back to the original office to
do more development, then you can expect a number of things.
Probably you'll get some correspondence from the regional office at some point letting
you know they need your help with some sort of development, or they're gonna ask you to
go to some exams, what have you.
Depends on what the judge is wanting.
If they look at your claim and decide they were wrong and you should be granted the condition
you have filed for, then they'll issue you a rating decision, in which case we start
that process all over again.
Look at your rating decision.
Make sure you think it's right.
If it's not, you file a notice of disagreement and continue the appeals process.
If after a BVA decision, the regional office does the development and still wants to deny
your claim, they will issue what is called a Supplemental Statement of the Case and we
refer to that as an SSOC.
So it's a Supplemental Statement of the Case that will explain why they're continuing to
deny your claim.
What's different about a SSOC after a BVA review is that you don't need to file a Form
Nine to that.
Only if the BVA's already reviewed that condition.
Anytime you get a statement on the case, you need to file a Form Nine within 60 days.
But if you're receiving an SSOC as a result of a BVA decision, that claim is automatically
going to be transferred back to the Board of Veteran's Appeals, and you should be notified
when that claim is being put back on the docket of the judge.
When it's back on the docket, you once again have an opportunity to submit all of your
evidence and arguments to the BVA judge, and they will issue another decision on those
claims.
Now, let's go back and talk about what if the BVA judge denies my claim, and I disagree
with that decision.
You have three options.
You can file a motion to reconsider.
So you're asking the judge to look at your case again.
You feel like they've made a mistake, there's something they've done wrong, generally an
error of law.
There is no time limit to ask the judge to conduct a reconsideration of his decision.
Also, you can ask him to vacate that decision, and redo the whole thing again.
And once again, you're going to have to have some really good reasons to get that granted.
Generally an error of law, a clear unmistakable error, some mistake has occurred in which
the BVA needs to vacate and re-look at that decision to begin with.
You could also certify your claims to the US Court of Appeals for Veteran's Claims,
which is lovingly referred to as the CVAC.
If you want to send your case to the CVAC after a BVA decision is issued, it must be
done within 120 days.
If you don't meet that deadline, then the claim can not be certified, and you have to
start over, losing your effective date.
So make sure you get your appeal in.
So once you get your claim to the CVAC, it takes a whole new different path, which we
are not going to talk about the appeals process timeline on that today.
But one thing I want to caution you, or a word of advice, is on any of the appeals deadlines
I have mentioned, the one year deadline for the NOD, the 60 day deadline for the SOC,
or the 120 day deadline for the CVAC.
If you are being represented for your veterans claims and you receive your rating decision,
you receive a statement of the claim, you receive a BVA decision, don't hesitate or
waste any time in contacting your rep and letting them know that you have received that decision.
Even if the VA looks like they have copied your representative on the bottom of that
decision, the representative may not always receive that document, so make sure you contact
your rep right away.
Notify them of what you've received so that you can get your appeal in on time and preserve
that effective date.
The VA appeals process timeline can be a very long and very confusing one.
If you have any questions at all about how to carry on your claim, how to win your claim
or where your claim is or you need help with your claim, don't hesitate to call Woods & Woods
at the number below or fill out the form on this screen, so that we can help you win your
case.