Getting VA disability can take a long time.
- It can take up to a year to get a rating decision from the VA after filing your application. If you are not happy with the rating decision, you have 1 year to appeal by filing a Notice of Disagreement.
- Recent information from the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) shows that it is currently taking 222 days from the date you file a Notice of Disagreement until you receive a Statement of the Case from the VA.
- If you appeal the Statement of the Case, then you have to file a VA form-9 requesting a hearing with the BVA. From the date you file your form-9 until you get a decision can take more than 2 years.
- Of the 48,804 cases the BVA handled in 2009, only 24% were awarded the benefits they were seeking. The rest were either denied (36%) or sent back (remanded) to the VA for additional development (37%).
If the BVA remands my case, how long will it take?
The average remand time is about a year and a half. But a remand doesn’t guarantee that your case will be decided the way you want.
Ultimately, it can take many years for your case to be fully resolved. But on average, it takes about four and a half years to get your case decided by the VA, assuming you have only one appeal to the BVA, and the VA approves your case when it gets sent back to them.
The Hamster Wheel
Many veterans are stuck in what we call the “hamster wheel” – where you get part of the benefits you are seeking, but the VA keeps sending your case back for bits and pieces of it to be decided. This can go on for years with no end in sight.
Hiring an attorney to represent you can take some of the momentum out of the hamster wheel. Out of the types of representatives listed in the BVA report, attorneys had one of the lowest denial rates in front of the BVA (see p. 21). Which means they also had the majority of their cases awarded or remanded.
As more attorneys handle more cases for disabled veterans, the statistics should get even better. Veteran Service Organizations are overworked. The attention they can give each case is pretty limited, and they do not necessarily have the training or legal expertise of an attorney.
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