Your first VA claim

You have never filed. Good. You are starting clean, and you can do this in the right order. This page lays out that order, drawn from the rating schedule, the regulations, and the Board decisions that show how first claims are actually decided.

A claim is evidence, not a form

The form on VA.gov is the last thing you touch. What the VA decides on is the record: service records, medical records, statements from people who know you, and the exam. 38 CFR 3.303(a) says service connection means the evidence shows that an injury or disease which led to a disability began during service. If it began before service, the evidence has to show that service made it worse. The form is how you hand that evidence in.

The three things the VA needs

For each condition, the rater looks for three things. The same three appear in 38 CFR 3.159(c)(4), the rule that tells the VA when it has to order an exam.

1. A current problem with a name. A diagnosis, or persistent or recurrent symptoms in the record.
2. Something that happened in service. An injury, illness, or exposure, or a presumption that stands in for it.
3. A link between the two. The VA calls this the nexus.

Miss any one and the claim fails. The link is the piece first-timers most often leave to chance.

Step 1. Gather records before you file

Request your service treatment records, personnel file, VA treatment records, and records from any private doctor who treated the condition. The VA has a duty to assist under 38 CFR 3.159(c). It will request service and other federal records itself and make reasonable efforts to get private ones. But for anything it does not already know about, you have to point the way. Tell the VA who holds the records, the dates, and the condition. Do that work first.

Then see a private doctor before you file. Ask for a written opinion on whether the condition is at least as likely as not related to service. That phrase matches the standard in 38 CFR 3.102, evidence in approximate balance. Also ask the doctor to fill out the VA's Disability Benefits Questionnaire, or DBQ, for the condition, if VA publishes one for it. VA keeps some DBQs off the public list, including hearing loss and tinnitus, initial PTSD, TBI, cold injury, and the Gulf War general medical exam. For those your doctor writes a report and the VA exam supplies the form. A DBQ has to be done the way a VA exam is done. For a joint or the spine, that means a goniometer, the tool that measures how far a joint bends. 38 CFR 4.46 calls a goniometer indispensable in VA's own exams. An adequate private report can be accepted for rating without a VA exam (38 CFR 3.326(c)), and if it falls short the VA orders its own exam (38 CFR 3.326(a)), so ask for the same tool. 38 CFR 4.59 says the joint should be tested for pain on active and passive motion, weight-bearing and not, and compared with the other joint if possible. The exam also has to measure again after repeated movement, note where pain starts, and record what a flare-up takes away (38 CFR 4.40, 4.45, and 4.59, as the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims reads them in DeLuca v. Brown and Sharp v. Shulkin, and as the DBQ form asks). A DBQ that estimates motion by eye is the same inadequate exam the Board sends back. The VA may still schedule its own exam. Your doctor's findings are what the examiner and the rater have to reckon with.

Thin service records are not the end. 38 CFR 3.303(d) allows service connection for a disease diagnosed after discharge when all the evidence shows it began in service. 38 CFR 3.102 resolves reasonable doubt in your favor when the evidence is in approximate balance, and it applies even without official records.

Steps 2 and 3. Choose conditions and find their ratings

The rating schedule in 38 CFR Part 4 does not rate "back pain." It rates lumbosacral strain, diagnostic code 5237 in 38 CFR 4.71a, by how far you can bend forward, your combined range of motion, and whether spasm or guarding changes how you walk or the shape of your spine. Every condition has a code and criteria. Find yours first, so you know what the exam has to measure. 38 CFR 4.7 says if your condition sits between two ratings and more nearly matches the higher one, the higher one applies.

Next, look for other problems the first condition caused. 38 CFR 3.310(a) covers a new disability caused by a condition that is already service connected. 38 CFR 3.310(b) covers a condition that a service-connected one made worse. Only the added harm counts, not the normal course of the disease. And it counts only when medical records show how bad the condition was before the rated one started making it worse, or, failing that, the earliest records after the worsening began (38 CFR 3.310(b)). A bad knee can change how you walk and pull the hip and back along with it. If a doctor connects them, those are claims of their own.

Step 4. Presumptives, the shortcut many miss

A presumption supplies the link. You show the qualifying service and the diagnosis, and the regulation stands in for the nexus unless the VA has affirmative evidence the condition came from somewhere else. 38 CFR 3.307 and 3.309 cover chronic diseases such as arthritis, high blood pressure, and diabetes that reached a rating of at least 10 percent within a year of separation. Three diseases on that list get longer. Hansen's disease and tuberculosis have three years, and multiple sclerosis has seven (38 CFR 3.307(a)(3)). They also cover conditions tied to Agent Orange and other herbicides, to time as a prisoner of war, and to the water at Camp Lejeune. 38 CFR 3.317 covers Gulf War veterans with undiagnosed illness or medically unexplained chronic multisymptom illness. One catch: under 38 CFR 3.317(a)(1)(i) the illness must have appeared either during service in the Southwest Asia theater or to a degree of 10 percent by December 31, 2026, unless VA extends that date again, as it has done repeatedly since 2001. Check the current text on eCFR before you rely on it. The burn pit presumptions live in two places. 38 CFR 3.320 covers asthma, rhinitis, sinusitis, and nine rare cancers of the larynx, trachea, and lung, to any degree, at any time after separation, for service in the Southwest Asia theater during the Persian Gulf War, which the rule dates from August 2, 1990, or in Afghanistan, Syria, Djibouti, or Uzbekistan on or after September 19, 2001 (38 CFR 3.320(a)(5)). The PACT Act, 38 U.S.C. 1120, adds a longer list, including COPD, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis, sarcoidosis, and cancers of the brain, head, neck, kidney, pancreas, reproductive organs, and respiratory system, plus lymphoma and melanoma, and it adds Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Somalia to the qualifying locations. VA lists them all at va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits/. Two newer sections, 38 CFR 3.320a and 3.320b (2025), extend the toxic-exposure presumption to bladder and ureter cancers and to acute and chronic leukemias, multiple myeloma (including MGUS), myelodysplastic syndromes, and myelofibrosis, for service on or after August 2, 1990 in the Southwest Asia theater or Somalia, and on or after September 11, 2001 in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or Uzbekistan. 38 CFR 3.318 presumes ALS appearing at any time after discharge for any veteran with 90 days or more of continuous active service.

Lock in your date

Under 38 CFR 3.400, an award on an initial claim generally runs from the date the VA receives the claim or the date entitlement arose, whichever is later. If the claim arrives within one year of separation, 3.400(b)(2)(i) moves that date back to the day after separation, or to the date entitlement arose if that came later. An intent to file, under 38 CFR 3.155(b), holds the receipt date for one year while you gather evidence. The rule gives three ways to do it. A saved VA.gov application counts, and so does the paper form. So does telling VA out loud, in person or by phone at 800-827-1000, when the VA employee writes your intent into your record (38 CFR 3.155(b)(1)(iii)). If you have no VA.gov login and no printer, the phone call is the one you can make today. It has to say which benefit you want, in this case compensation. It does not need to name a condition. Veterans who understand this lock the date first and build the claim second.

Why an exam is scheduled and what to expect

If your file shows a diagnosis, an in-service event, and some sign the two may be connected, but not enough medical evidence to decide, 38 CFR 3.159(c)(4) requires the VA to schedule an exam or get an opinion. The VA calls it a compensation and pension exam, or C&P. Under 38 CFR 3.326(a) you must go. Under 38 CFR 3.655(b), miss it without good cause and an original claim is rated on what is already in the file. The examiner measures against the criteria from step 2. 38 CFR 4.1 says each disability is viewed in relation to its history, so tell yours. Describe your worst days, honestly.

The mistakes first-timers make

• Filing bare. Sending the form with nothing attached. 38 CFR 3.159(c) says the VA helps you get records. It does not build your case.
• Claiming the symptom instead of the condition. "Knee pain" is a symptom. Patellofemoral pain syndrome is a diagnosis the schedule can rate, under the knee codes in 38 CFR 4.71a, by measured limitation of motion or instability.
• Skipping the mental health piece. Depression or anxiety caused by chronic pain, or by any other service-connected condition, is a separate disability under 38 CFR 3.310, rated on its own under 38 CFR 4.130. It is easy to miss.
• Exaggerating. It gets caught and costs you credibility on every issue.

Where claims are filed

You can file on VA.gov, by mailing, faxing, or handing in VA Form 21-526EZ, or through an accredited representative: a Veterans Service Organization (VSO) representative, who charges nothing, or an accredited agent or attorney, who may generally charge a fee only for work after the VA has decided the claim once (38 CFR 14.629 and 14.636(c), with narrow exceptions in 14.636(d) for a home loan case and for a fee paid by a disinterested third party). This site teaches. It does not prepare or file claims. You file, with a record you built.

The Claim Map is where you build the list. Pick a body part, and it shows the conditions the VA rates there in plain English, each with its diagnostic code, the rating percentages that code carries, and the secondary conditions most often claimed alongside it with the Board counts. Then it asks where you are in the process, where and when you served, and what evidence you already have, and saves all of it to your account. The rating criteria rung by rung, and the Board decisions behind each condition, are what the written playbook adds. To read decisions today, open the decision pages for your condition.