- Hello, and welcome. I'm Matthew Hill
here with Carol Ponton.
- Carol Ponton.
- With the Hill & Ponton video blog.
And today we want to talk to you about
decisions at the Board of Veterans Appeals.
Earlier we've spoken about how we encourage
veterans to take their claim all the way to the
Board of Veterans Appeals and just to go over
where that is in the whole scheme,
you file your claim at the regional office.
If it's denied once and then denied twice,
you have an opportunity to appeal up to
the Board of Veterans Appeals.
And today, we just want to talk about
what happens there with its decision-making
and what it does.
- Right. Since so many people don't go to the Board,
they don't understand what happens when
they get a decision back from them.
So the Board can either deny your benefits,
and if they do, you can appeal
to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
I don't think there, I think a lot more cases
are not denied than are denied. Okay?
So what happens if they don't deny your claim?
They can do one of two things.
Basically they can grant your benefits or
they can send the case back to the regional office
and tell them to do a number of things.
Have another C & P Exam, collect more evidence,
a number of things.
- And that's called a remand when they send it back.
- So it's called a grant or it's called a remand.
- Or denied.
- But often what we see is a mixture of both.
So, say the veteran asked for service connection
for their back and service connection for unemployability,
now the VA may grant the service connection for the back
and then send back the unemployability because
once the back is rated then that will help decide
whether or not the veteran's entitled to unemployability.
But what's confusing is how the VA acts on that.
When the remand comes back, if there's a grant,
the grants are effectuated.
They're put into place within a couple of months usually,
no more than three.
But the remand's where they tell the regional office
you need to evaluate this to a C & P Exam,
they are taking three years.
So what they do is bifurcate, they take it apart,
they effectuate the grant, do a rating decision,
pay the veteran for that, but then
the rest of it sits there.
So this veteran who is service connected for
their back would get the rating for the back,
start getting paid for the back,
but they would not evaluate the unemployability
until they got around to it and
it's taking three years right now.
- And, unfortunately, for a veteran who has a
decision from the Board remanding,
there's language in there saying that
it's supposed to be expedited by the regional office.
The Veterans Court, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims
has basically said that expediting means
two years or under.
So, it's like Carol is saying going three years and
you have a possibility of appealing that to get them
to do it quicker, but in all likelihood,
it is going to take a couple years.
- Right. Until, I think, the VA gets more help,
they just don't have the personality...
the personnel to take care of all of this.
- They don't have personality either.
- Some of them have great personality, some of them don't,
but right now I can tell you they don't have
the manpower they need.
- So, when you finally get that decision and
we're probably talking here four or five, seven years
into your claim, it can be confusing.
But the first thing you want to look at
is the for "Conclusions of Law" section that says
were you granted or not, you know,
granted the benefits you were seeking.
And then if there's a remand,
you want to see what are they looking for.
- So you're going to have a decision
that may be 38 pages long.
So it starts off what does the veteran want,
maybe some findings, and then there's this huge,
maybe 25 pages where they cite law or
they cite the facts, and then at the bottom
they tell you what they're going to do.
I'm granting this,
you found service connected for your back.
Or I'm remanding and telling the regional office to
do a C & P Exam, collect more evidence, whatever.
- Well, thank you for joining us today
and another episode of our VA Veterans Blog.
Have a great day.