3M Defective Earplugs Sold to Military

3M settled with the US government for 9.1 million dollars. The lawsuit was based on a whistle blower who actually notified the government that 3M was selling these earplugs that they were under a defense contract with the US government to provide and with known defects.

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Aid and Attendance

Aid and Attendance is one of the most under-utilized benefits out there. We encourage veterans to do some research and figure out if they think they’re entitled to it or call our office and we will help you.

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Appeals Modernization Act

Starting on February 19 of 2019, basically if you get a statement of the case or a supplemental statement of the case, then you are eligible to opt-in to the Appeals Modernization Act, which gives you various different, new tracks that you can go to for your appeals.

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DIC Benefits for Survivors of Veterans

If you’re a qualified surviving spouse and, in some cases but much more rare cases, if you have a qualified surviving child or surviving parent in even more rare circumstances, they may be entitled to benefits after the veteran’s passing if that veteran had a service connected cause of death or if they had a total rating for a period of 10 years prior to their passing, then they’d be presumed to have a service connected cause of death.

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Disabled Widow’s Benefits

A Widow’s Disability Benefit is usually for people that, if they have not worked, but they’ve had a spouse that has recently passed away, they can draw off of their spouse’s work record as opposed to their work record. It’s good especially if a spouse was making more than the person that is disabled, they are able to draw off of that spouse’s earnings record.

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Individual Unemployability

The higher your total percentage is, the harder it is to get an increase if you get another grant. What unemployability does is, if you were at 60% for one particular condition or 70% for multiple, one of which, with some different variations, is at 40%, you can apply for unemployability, and at that point, they can grant you 100% payment even if you’re not, technically, at 100%.

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PTSD Regulations

The VA made a change to the PTSD regulations in 2010 conceding that the structure involved in getting a PTSD award can be from fear of hostile military activity; allowing veterans who may not have been technically in combat to obtain PTSD disability.

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The New VA Appeals Process

So, now when you do want to appeal, you’ll still file a notice of disagreement, but what you’ll do is file it directly with the board of veteran’s appeals, and then at that point, there are three different tracks that you can choose based on what your case looks like, what kind of evidence you have, what the issues are and appeal.

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Traumatic Brain Injuries in Veterans

A TBI is just short for traumatic brain injury. And essentially what that means is there is any kind of action or reaction or anything that basically impacts the head or the brain whether it be the force of blast or potentially a gunshot or just different types of shrapnel fragments, different things like that.

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What is Lay Evidence in a Veterans Disability Claim and Why is it so Valuable?

In a veterans disability claim, lay evidence is basically any evidence and all evidence that is not medical. If you have a statement from the veteran, a statement from his family members, friends, people that they served with, any statement regarding the veteran’s condition or things that happened in the past, anyone who’s not a medical professional but would have personal knowledge regarding the veteran’s either current condition or in service injury, things like that. It’d be any kind of non-medical expert that can provide some kind of information that’s pertinent to the claim.

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Writs to Court of Appeals for Veterans

The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims is a federal court that is specifically there to adjudicate claims from the Board of Veterans Appeals. So if you have a decision from the Board of Veterans Appeals, you went to your hearing or you didn’t request a hearing but let’s say you get denied for whatever the issue may be, your next step if you don’t want to file a motion for reconsideration with the Board is to appeal to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

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