If you’re at a point where a VA disability claim is eligible for reopening—meaning that you’ve either missed the deadline for appeal or you’ve exhausted all your options for appeal—you’ve probably wondered, more than once, if it would be better to just start over from scratch with a new claim.
One of the things that an experienced Dallas VA disability attorney does when meeting with a prospective client is evaluate their current situation and review the options they have for their next step. Without knowing all the details of a veteran’s situation, it’s difficult to say whether reopening is the right choice for you—but there’s something about reopening a veterans’ disability compensation claim you’ll want to keep in mind.
While it is possible the VA will reopen a compensation claim for service-connected disability, survivor benefits, or burial benefits with sufficient evidence from the veteran or the veterans’ survivors, doing so will not reinstate the original filing date for the claim. In other words:
Your new effective date will be represented by the date you requested the claim be reopened.
There’s no time limit on how long you have to reopen an eligible claim—you can do so three months or fifty years after the fact. However, if you succeed in getting the claim approved, back pay will go back to the point at which the case was reopened, not the original filing date.
So don’t wait—find out what you need to do to reopen a claim today with a free evaluation from a DallasVA benefits attorney at Morgan & Weisbrod learn more. Call 800-800-6353or complete the online form.
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by Paul B. Burkhalter Managing Partner of Morgan & Weisbrod, Board Certified in Social Security Disability Law.
