Not all wounds are physical, and some of the most enduring injuries incurred by our servicemen and women are to their mental health. These days, one of the most commonly discussed conditions is posttraumatic stress disorder, or “PTSD,” which veterans can develop after witnessing or experiencing a life-threatening or otherwise traumatic event such as war, a natural disaster, or sexual assault. PTSD can be a serious issue for many veterans, and is commonly characterized by symptoms such as flashbacks, sleep disturbances, irritability, isolation, anxiety, and hypervigilance. We have years of experience working with veterans experiencing PTSD, and bring compassion and understanding to our work with our clients who are seeking VA benefits for PTSD.

Beyond PTSD, many veterans experience other mental health conditions which are associated with their military service or service-connected disabilities. Something that we commonly see is veterans developing conditions such as depression or anxiety associated with their service-connected disabilities. For example, a veteran with a painful or disfiguring service-connected skin condition may develop an anxiety condition due to the perceived social stigma of their scars. Similarly, a veteran with a painful service-connected back condition may develop depression because their pain prevents them from doing activities that they once enjoyed like hunting or playing with their children. In both of these examples, the veteran would likely be entitled to VA compensation for their mental health conditions because those conditions are a consequence of their service-connected disabilities.

The physical demands of military service can have lifelong consequences on the bodies of veterans. One area that is most commonly affected is the back and other joints such as knees and hips. Back and joint conditions can be especially difficult claims to win because the condition may first appear years or even decades after military service. For instance, a paratrooper who jumped from planes with heavy packs on their back while in the military might not begin experiencing knee pain until they reach middle age and VA will point to this long gap between separation and the first medical treatment as evidence against the claim. We have years of experience helping our clients overcome VA’s denials and win service connection for their back and joint conditions.

After winning service connection, you need to make sure that VA has given you an appropriate disability rating. It’s not uncommon for VA to give a lowball 10% rating for a veteran with a back disability so bad that he can barely walk. That is where we come in… our years of experience means that we’re intimately familiar with all the complicated rules that VA uses to assign ratings for back and joint conditions. You would be surprised how frequently VA does not follow its own rules in assigning ratings for back and joint disabilities.

Over the years, America’s servicemen and women have come into contact with some pretty nasty toxins. Whether it’s Agent Orange in the Vietnam era, the burning oil fields of the Gulf War, the burn pits of the War on Terror, or any of a multitude of other toxins, many veterans experience serious and long-lasting disabilities as a result of their exposures during their period of service. To compensate veterans exposed to these toxins, Congress has established various rules which are supposed to make it easier for a veteran to receive compensation for certain conditions. Unfortunately, many veterans have encountered difficulties in getting the benefits they deserve.

We have extensive experience working with veterans who were exposed to toxins running the gamut from radiation to chemicals to fumes and everything in between. Among the best known toxins to which our servicemen and women were exposed was Agent Orange during the Vietnam era. We have successfully represented many Vietnam veterans seeking benefits due to Agent Orange exposure, as well as veterans exposed to Agent Orange in places outside of Vietnam, including Thailand, Korea, Japan, and Panama. We even had one case involving a veteran exposed to Agent Orange in Florida! Veterans of more recent eras have faced their own toxic exposures, and we have applied the lessons we learned in the Agent Orange cases to the more modern exposures from the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

In the past, if a veteran died while his claim or appeal was pending with VA, the claim or appeal died as well. Fortunately, a number of years ago Congress changed the law to permit eligible survivors to step into the shoes of their deceased loved one and pursue the claim or appeal to a conclusion. The benefit to this newer system of “substitution” is that survivors no longer have to start from scratch and can instead continue pursuing the case in much the same way as the veteran had during their life. It’s important to note that you can pursue substitution even where a veteran did not die due to a service-connected condition. Instead, the goal of substitution is to recover any retroactive lump sum payment that should have been paid to the veteran during their lifetime.

If a veteran died from a service-connected condition, or if the veteran was totally disabled due to a service-connected condition for a prolonged time prior to their death, eligible survivors may be owed a monthly benefit known as “Dependency and Indemnity Compensation” or “DIC.” Over the years we have worked with countless widows and widowers whose simply don’t want to be dealing with the bureaucracy of VA while grieving the loss of their loved one. That’s where we come in. If VA has denied your claim for survivors’ benefits, we can review your case to see what type of evidence is needed and advise you on the best path forward.

After VA determines that a particular condition is service-connected, they assign a disability rating between 0% and 100%. This percentage corresponds to the average impairment in income that a person with a particular rating would experience as a result of their disability. Quite often, VA assigns an inappropriately low disability rating. While you may feel that VA’s rating is low, reading and understanding the criteria for higher ratings can feel like trying to understand a foreign language. That’s where we come in. All we do is work on VA disability claims, so we know the ins and outs of all VA’s regulations for assigning disability ratings. We apply this experience to the facts of your case to ensure that you’re paid what you deserve.

When VA awards service connection for a disability, it will assign an effective date. This date represents the day from which VA will pay you compensation for your condition, and determines how far back your retroactive backpay goes. The general rule for assigning an effective date is the later date of the following: (a) the date you filed your claim, or (b) the date you became entitled to the benefit. However, there are several important exceptions to this general rule which could mean you’re entitled to years (or even decades) of additional compensation. We know the rules governing effective dates like the back of our hands, and have helped our clients file appeals and win decades of additional benefits which VA ignored in their initial decisions.