Transcript:
00:00:00 – 00:00:15
When you get any sort of decision from the VA that grants a benefit, they’re going to assign an effective date for that benefit. The effective date is the earliest date that the VA has determined you became entitled to compensation for that claim.
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Now, there’s a lot of exceptions to these rules that I’m about to go over, but I just want to go over some common rules regarding effective dates and how they’re determined. So let’s say that you file your initial claim for disability benefits within a year of your discharge from the military. The effective date for any grant that comes from that initial claim is going to be the day after you separate from service.
00:00:36 – 00:00:58
If you’re filing a claim more than one year after discharge, the effective date is usually going to be the date that the VA receives your claim or the date that your entitlement to that benefit arose. Let’s say that you filed an initial claim. You were denied. You never appealed it. It’s been the appeal period for that decision has expired. So you’re looking to reopen that claim.
00:00:58 – 00:01:20
And typically, you’re going to do this by filing a supplemental claim with new and relevant evidence. When you do that, the effective date of that reopened claim, that supplemental claim, is going to be the date that you filed that supplemental claim. Let’s say that you have one of the Agent Orange presumptive conditions or burn pits or particulate matter if you’re a Gulf War Post 9-11 veteran.
00:01:20 – 00:01:36
then a lot of times your effective date is going to be driven by the change in the law that added that condition to the presumptive list. If you’re filing a claim within one year of that change in the law, then your effective date is going to be effective the date that that law changed.
00:01:36 – 00:02:03
If you file after a year of that change in law going into effect, it’s going to revert back to the date that you filed that claim. What if you’re filing for an increased rating? Well, there’s a couple of different considerations for that when we’re talking about effective date. The effective date for a claim for increase is usually going to be either the date you filed the claim for increase or the date the medical evidence actually showed your condition worsened if it’s after that date of your claim.
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There is one exception to this rule. If your condition worsened within a year of you filing that claim for increase, the VA has a one year look back period. So if the increase occurred during that one year prior to the filing of the claim for increase, they can use that date as your effective date for that award.
This transcription was AI populated.
