Are you recently discharged from active duty service and living in the state of Ohio with a possible service-connected disability claim, but you don’t know where to begin? Are you a disabled veteran with a current VA disability rating, but you need increased disability benefits? Has the VA denied your original or additional claim for VA benefits?
If your answer to any of these questions is “Yes,” then our experienced VA disability attorneys at Stone Rose Law can help you. We serve armed forces veterans like you in the entire state of Ohio with free assistance in preparing, filing, and tracking your initial or supplemental VA benefits claim.
This is not just a free initial consultation. We help you from start to finish at no cost to you. It is one small way we can say “Thank you” for your service to your country.
Call us today at (480) 498-8998 to discuss your VA claim for benefits or your denied benefits appeal.
If you have suffered an injury or disabling medical condition while serving in the military, or if your military service made an existing injury or condition worse, then VA disability benefits can provide monthly financial compensation.
In addition to monthly compensation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) makes many other kinds of benefits available to disabled veterans. Even if you receive a 0 percent disability rating with no monthly compensation payment, you are still eligible for other valuable veterans’ services. These include medical benefits, VA educational benefits, mental health counseling, and even VA home loan eligibility.
The VA offers multiple ways for disabled veterans in Ohio to file for VA disability claims benefits.
The easiest way is to file online. You can also submit your completed application to your local VA Regional Office by mail, fax, or in person.
No matter how you submit your benefits claim to the VA, you must prove three things to receive disability compensation:
The VA’s decision on whether you are an eligible veteran is considered by multiple factors. The VA will look at the dates of active duty service to ensure that they fall within a recognized time period, along with your military records like your DD-214.
Proof of active military service is typically all that is needed for active duty service members. However, there are a few automatic disqualifiers. For example, military service members who received a dishonorable discharge or, in some cases, an other-than-honorable discharge can be precluded from receiving disability benefits if they cannot resolve these matters favorably.
A disability is a current physical or mental illness or impairment that your active duty military service caused or worsened.
VA benefits are meant to compensate you to the extent that today your service-connected disability renders you less than 100 percent able-bodied. Usually, the best way to show a disability is to provide medical records showing your ongoing treatment for it.
Proving a service connection is one of the basic requirements to qualify for disability compensation. Your current disability symptoms must relate to one or more disabling events that happened to you while you were a military service member.
The VA considers whether a present service-connected disability is proved case-by-case. Your service medical records and any records of post-service medical treatment you have received will be part of the claims evidence.
Although some medical conditions do not require you to prove a connection to military service—which are known as presumed disabilities—most require you to prove a service connection.
The VA rejects many veterans’ disability claims because they lack sufficient evidence to create a service connection. One of our Ohio VA disability attorneys at Stone Rose Law can help you gather all the documents and other support you need to clear this potential obstacle to your benefits claim approval.
Below are some specific kinds of medical conditions that the VA will consider in addition to disabilities that arose directly because of a service-connected disabling event.
A latent condition is a medical condition that you have when you enter military service, but which has not yet become disabling. If your latent condition worsens after you leave the service, the VA will consider whether something happened to you while serving to aggravate it.
If that is the case, then you may still qualify for disability benefits for your veterans’ service despite your service activity not being the original cause of your condition.
Another way you can receive a service-connected disability is if it comes from a different disability that is service-connected.
For example, your doctor might diagnose you as having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after leaving the service based on a traumatic event you experienced while in service. If your PTSD treatment includes drugs that have a side effect of contributing to significant weight gain, this additional weight could ultimately lead to you being diagnosed later on with Type 2 Diabetes.
In this case, although your diabetic condition arose after your discharge and is not itself a symptom of PTSD, you could still be able to trace a secondary service connection by showing that the PTSD treatment caused your diabetes.
Another factor the VA will evaluate is if your disability is related to your military service. If your injury, illness, or disabling condition comes from doing something that has nothing to do with a service-connected condition, this can lead to a VA denial of your claim.
For example, if you are injured during the commission of a crime, or your injury is the result of untreated substance abuse behavior, these are acts that the VA will conclude have no connection with your military service.
If the VA approves your initial or additional disability compensation claim, it will assign you a VA disability rating. Your rating will range from 0 percent (non-compensable) to 100 percent or for totally disabled veterans.
How the VA calculates your disability rating can be complex. Many factors go into deciding your rating, including whether you have multiple disabilities (most veteran claims for benefits are for more than one), and the severity of each disability.
If you have more than one disability, then the VA will use a formula to arrive at a combined disability rating. It is more complicated than simply adding up the individual disability ratings. Instead, the VA calculations use a collection of tables in a process some call “VA Math” to arrive at a final combined figure.
One of our Stone Rose Law VA lawyers can help you prove the extent and degree of your disability to achieve the amount of disability compensation you need. Our VA Disability Calculator can help you estimate how much you may receive in monthly disability payments if you have multiple disabilities.
Monthly disability compensation are payments the VA makes directly to you. How much you can receive in monthly benefits will depend on your combined disability rating. The higher your disability rating, the more you can receive.
The VA also matches your disability to a benefit amount based on the current year’s rates.
For 2024, the disability rating compensation for an individual veteran is as follows:
These monthly payments increase for disabled veterans with dependents.
As mentioned above, monthly compensation is only one kind of VA disability compensation that might be available to those with ratings higher than 0 percent. Here are some additional compensation benefits for veterans.
If you have a spouse, dependent children, or one or both parents who depend on you to take care of them, then you can receive additional compensation benefits for them in Special Monthly Compensation for aid and attendance services they perform.
Sometimes surviving spouses or other dependents can continue to receive monthly payment VA benefits after a veteran dies. These surviving spouse benefits include coverage of burial costs and Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC benefits) for your surviving family members.
There are multiple special VA veteran benefits you might be eligible for. For example:
A Stone Rose Law Ohio veterans disability attorney can help you learn which ones may apply to you.
In addition to veterans benefits that the VA provides, Ohio has its own veterans benefits that Ohio resident veterans may be eligible for.
The Ohio Department of Veterans Services administers the provision of benefits and services to Ohio veterans. Eligibility for some benefits may depend on residency, military component, and Veteran disability status.
Here are some of the benefits available to Ohio veterans:
Some of these benefits may have specific eligibility requirements or application processes, and not all benefits may be available to all veterans. An experienced Ohio veterans disability benefits lawyer can help you to know which state veterans benefits you may be eligible to receive.
At Stone Rose Law, our Ohio VA disability lawyers begin with a systematic and methodical approach to your specific VA claim. After consultation with an accredited VA disability benefits attorney, and with your permission, our attorneys will obtain a copy of your VA claims file. Because our attorneys have access to the same systems the VA uses to maintain claims files, we can get your claims file very quickly.
Once we can access your claims file, we will do a comprehensive review of everything in it. This means we review all your service treatment records, your VA records, any previous claims for benefits, and any rating decisions. We thoroughly scour the record to look for:
After reviewing your file and creating a plan for your initial claim, we will then discuss with you our findings and recommendations.
If you have never applied for VA benefits before, then we will assist you at no cost to you in preparing and filing a claim. We will monitor your claim, assist you with preparing for C&P examinations, and advise you of any VA decisions as part of this free service.
Part of your VA eligibility evaluation can take the form of a Compensation and Pension (C&P) Examination. This is an examination of the VA schedules for you to meet with a VA claims examiner.
Not every benefits claim will receive a request for a C&P exam. The VA requests these exams when it needs more information about your disability and to help assign a disability rating.
Our veterans’ disability lawyers have experience working with medical doctors, psychologists, and vocational examiners to obtain favorable opinions. Many times, C&P examiners contracted by the VA are not qualified, don’t listen to the veteran’s symptoms, or render medically unsupported opinions. In these cases, our attorneys have the experience necessary to combat these harmful examinations and to counter them with better medical evidence.
VA denials of initial application claims come from two main sources: problems with the claim, like insufficient evidence to establish the existence of the disability or its service connection, and mistakes the VA can make when it is considering your claim.
Some of the most common problems we see in Ohio VA benefits claims include:
When it comes to making a disability appeal, you have three options to challenge an initial VA decision:
Appealing to the Board comes with its own set of choices and options. These include:
To present a convincing appeal to a denied veterans disability claim, it is important for you to have a thorough understanding of VA regulations and procedures, how the VA applies them, and the time limit you must work within. This is what a Stone Rose Law VA disability claim denial lawyer will do for you.
Appealing a claim denial is something that we strongly recommend you do with the extensive experience of a Stone Rose Law Ohio VA claims appeal attorney on your side. One of our experienced veterans’ appeals attorneys at Stone Rose Law can guide you through the veterans’ disability appeal process until the matter is finally resolved.
Our expert veterans attorneys at Stone Rose Law are VA disability claim advocates. They have many years of experience in helping Ohio clients with their VA appeals, they understand veterans disability law, and they know how the VA application or appeal process works.
Our law firm is accredited to represent veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs and is admitted to practice VA disability law before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
A Stone Rose Law veterans disability lawyer will know what goes into making the strongest and most persuasive possible appeal on your behalf, so you do not have to. When you hire our law office to represent you in your VA claim, you can be confident that your VA disability lawyer will have the experience, competence, and resources to aggressively fight for your claim throughout the VA appeals process.
If we win your appeal, we only charge a reasonable, one-time contingency fee from your award from the VA.
If we are not successful with your appeal, then you owe us nothing.
Going up against the Department of Veterans Affairs is never easy, but it is not something you should fear, especially if you have legal help from a VA disability advocate.
Our legal team of veterans disability attorneys are dedicated to providing legal assistance to Ohio veteran service members with disability claims like you so you can receive disability benefits you deserve for your service-connected disabilities. We have a proven track record of successfully representing many veteran claimants with service-related benefits claims.
We can help you prove that your injury or medical condition is connected to your time in service, or that your disability has worsened since the time you first started receiving veterans disability benefits.
Contact us today to discuss how our law firm and our veterans lawyers can help you with your VA claim or appeal. Schedule a free case review with an Ohio veterans benefits lawyer at (480) 498-8998, or contact us online and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
