Hey, veterans, Travis Studdard, a veterans' disability attorney here.
I wanted to follow up with you on a recent video I did, where I talked about the ability
to draw TDIU benefits, or individual unemployability benefits, from VA and still work when you
are only receiving money that's below the federally-designated poverty threshold.
Now I want to tell you some even better news that may benefit you in your claim, which
is really the exception to the exception.
General rule is you can't work and draw TDIU.
The exception is the one I talked about, where if you have marginal employment with limited
earnings under the poverty threshold, you can draw your TDIU and receive your paycheck.
If you earn over that, then you don't draw your TDIU.
Here's the exception to that exception, which is the second definition of marginal employment.
That's when you are in a protected work environment, also known as a sheltered work environment.
If you are in that situation, you can earn as much money as you want and still draw full
individual unemployability benefits.
What is a protected work environment?
Well, as the VA says in 4.16, this is a very fact-intensive inquiry, and it basically comes
down to a situation where a veteran is in a very specialized, unique position -- that
he has a job, earning good money, but wouldn't normally be able to go out in the national
economy and earn that type of money.
The best example is probably a veteran who has service-connected disabilities and works
in a family business.
He works for his father, who has a company, and the veteran has, let's say, severe PTSD.
He has days where he simply just can't come in, and that happens quite often, yet his
father keeps him on a salary, pays him that full paycheck every week whether he comes
or not, because he wants to pay his son because he's his son.
If this veteran went out in the regular economy, no employer who didn't have a special relationship
with that veteran would pay him that full salary to work just on the days that the veteran
was able to work.
Again, usually a family business-type situation.
There are some other specialized programs for veterans or for disabled persons, where
they earn full pay even though they're not able to do the full amount of work as a non-disabled
person would.
Again, the VA recognizes those are special situations, where the veteran probably wouldn't
be earning that money if it wasn't for their special status with the employer.
So, again, the VA doesn't penalize you, and the good news is, you can draw that paycheck
and draw the TDIU benefits; but, again, you know that VA is going to look at that with
a critical eye, be very skeptical, so you're going to have to establish that this is a
unique situation and probably have some evidence from your employer that they wouldn't be doing
this for anyone other than you specifically.
So, again, it can be done.
Those are two different ways you can do it.
If that's your situation, good luck with it.
If VA denies you, then we may be able to assist you on an appeal.
You can reach out to us on our website, winyourvetclaim.com.
Check out our other videos for information on this and some other topics as well.
Have a great day and thanks for watching.