1. Fill out VA form 0966, Intent to File. This preserves your effective date for payment (not needed for those coming off active duty) and gives you 12 months to gather your documents to file your claim. This can be used for every claim, not just your first one. Consider this a bookmark in time, while you’re pulling everything together for your claim.

2. If you’ve seen any civilian doctors for any condition/injury you’re claiming, get those records. This saves a month easy, in processing your claim and ensures all your treatment will be considered when deciding your rating. If you can’t or simply don’t want to do this yourself, complete the release forms and the VA will attempt to get them for you. (VA forms 21-4142/4142a). Without these records the chronicity of your pain from military discharge to current day is missing and often times results in a denial.

3. The VA will get your military medical records (called service treatment records, STRs), you don’t have to do this yourself!! If you have your originals you need to turn them over to the VA as they’ve never been archived and the VA won’t be able to get them. Be patient as this step can take months.

4. If you’re claiming PTSD you need to complete the VA form 0781 and submit it with your claim. If you mention KIA or injuries in combat as your stressors, do the best you can to give dates no broader than three months. If you don’t have a combat award the VA has to “verify/validate” what you went through that’s why this is important.

5. If you have dependents, complete a VA form 686c. You’ll get paid a little more for each dependent once you reach a 30% rating. (Just remember to tell the VA if you get a divorce ASAP, so they can remove your spouse. If not you’ll accrue a debt.)

6. Complete the actual claim form, VA form 21-526ez. Use the most current version, March 2018. If you have been diagnosed with something, claim it that way. So if you have “runners knee” or “patella femoral syndrome” claim that, don’t just claim “knee pain”. Be as specific as possible when listing your conditions on the 526ez, try to avoid putting “hand”, tell the VA which hand and again if you have a diagnosis or say, a fracture, list it that way. The 2018 version of this form gives you some room to explain a little about when and where you incurred your injury which is nice.

**I’ve provided a link to all forms mentioned here on my main blog page.