Submit With Evidence, Not Just a Form

Step 7 of the method is submitting with evidence. A claim is evidence, not a form. The form tells VA what you're asking for. The evidence is what lets a rater say yes.

This is the step I'd slow down on. A form goes in fast and an empty file comes back slow.

If this is your first claim, the Claim Map helps you list your conditions and asks what evidence you already have.

What has to be in the file

The rule on service connection says what it means.

Service connection connotes many factors but basically it means that the facts, shown by evidence, establish that a particular injury or disease resulting in disability was incurred coincident with service in the Armed Forces, or if preexisting such service, was aggravated therein.

The facts, shown by evidence. Not asserted on a form. Shown.

Three pieces do that work. VA names all three in the rule that decides whether it owes you an exam.

First, a current diagnosis, or symptoms that keep coming back.

Contains competent lay or medical evidence of a current diagnosed disability or persistent or recurrent symptoms of disability

Second, the event or exposure in service.

Establishes that the veteran suffered an event, injury or disease in service …

Third, the link between the two.

Indicates that the claimed disability or symptoms may be associated with the established event, injury, or disease in service or with another service-connected disability.

VA needs its own exam or medical opinion only when the file doesn't already hold enough medical evidence to decide the claim. Put the three in yourself and a rater has something to decide on.

VA decides on "the entire evidence of record". That's whatever is in the file the day it's decided, and nothing that isn't.

The date VA receives it

The form matters for one thing. It sets the date.

A complete claim is on VA's form, with your name and enough service information for VA to verify your service. It names the benefit, describes your conditions where the form asks, and is signed.

VA generally treats a complete claim as filed on the date it receives it. Your effective date is the date an award reaches back to. Unless another rule says otherwise, it "will be the date of receipt of the claim or the date entitlement arose, whichever is later".

Whichever is later. A claim received later is dated later, and how far back an award reaches moves with it.

There's an opening for direct service connection. That's a condition you show began or got worse in service, not one VA presumes. File inside a year of getting out and the date can reach back to the day after you separated. A condition VA presumes has its own one-year rule. Past that year, the general rule above applies.

The intent to file

An intent to file is the one thing here that buys you time and asks nothing for it. It tells VA you're coming. It has to name the general benefit, such as compensation or pension. It doesn't have to name a specific benefit or any medical condition.

Here's what it does.

If VA receives a complete claim within 1 year of the filing of an intent to file a claim that meets the requirements of paragraph (b) of this section, it will be considered filed as of the date of receipt of the intent to file a claim.

The date is held on the day VA receives the intent to file, and you get a year to build the file behind it. That's the year Step 1 asks for.

There are three ways to send one. Start an application in VA's online claims system and save it. Send the signed and dated form VA prescribes for it. Or say it to a VA employee designated to take it, who records the date VA received it.

Now the part I'd put on a calendar.

If an intent to file a claim is not submitted in the form required by paragraph (b)(1) of this section or a complete claim is not filed within 1 year of the receipt of the intent to file a claim, VA will not take further action unless a new claim or a new intent to file a claim is received.

Let the year run out and the date goes with it. The rule on dating a claim also caps how far back the date can go. A complete claim is never treated as filed more than one year before the day it arrives. And VA won't recognize more than one intent to file at a time for the same benefit.

Send it all at once

Once a substantially complete claim is in, VA has work of its own.

VA has a duty to assist claimants in obtaining evidence to substantiate all substantially complete initial and supplemental claims

Use it. Name everyone holding records you can't get yourself. It's slower than you are, though. Each record VA chases is a request and a wait. For records outside the federal government, VA's efforts generally mean a first request and, if nothing comes, at least one follow-up.

There's a clock on your side too. You have one year from the date of VA's notice to send what VA asks for. Then read the next sentence.

If the claimant has not responded to the notice within 30 days, VA may decide the claim prior to the expiration of the one-year period based on all the information and evidence contained in the file, including information and evidence it has obtained on behalf of the claimant and any VA medical examinations or medical opinions.

Thirty days. That's the argument for filing everything at once. A claim that arrives complete asks less of the duty to assist, because there's less left to chase. And it's whole the day someone can decide it.

What our counts show

We index the public Board of Veterans' Appeals decisions and read the heading over each issue.

• The words effective date appear in 115,181 issue headings across every year we have indexed, and in 45,522 of them since 2019.
• Narrow that to a heading asking for an earlier effective date and it's 15,806 across every year we have indexed, and 8,672 since 2019.

What that shows is that the date is something veterans argue over later, and nothing else. Every decision counted here is an appeal, so a regional office decided first and the veteran disagreed. These are not the odds on a first claim. A heading names what a veteran raised, not why the Board decided. A mention is not a reason for the outcome.

What goes in with it

1. Service treatment records, your personnel file, private and VA treatment records, and your DD-214, as Step 1 lays out.
2. The nexus opinion, a doctor's letter linking the condition to your service or to a condition VA already rates.
3. A Disability Benefits Questionnaire (DBQ), VA's exam form, for each condition that has one published.
4. Your own statement, and the statements from the people who watched it happen, Step 8.
5. For anything you couldn't get, who holds it, the rough dates, and the condition treated, so VA can chase it.
6. Every condition you're claiming, in one claim.

One claim, filed once, with all of it attached. File in pieces and a decision can land on the thin part while the rest is still in the mail.

The Claim Map asks which of these you already have.

For each of your main conditions, the written playbook shows the evidence that made the difference in Board cases like yours. See what the playbook covers

Step 8 is lay evidence. This is education, not legal advice, and I'm not your representative.