hypertension Death Certificate

[Charleese]

Hi everyone,

My brother-in-law passed away last year and my sister applied for DIC. He was service connected for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma even though he was treated by them for several other conditions. He had been going to the VA for years but just got service connected in May 2004 and died in June 2004. My sister sent VA in Ohio a letter after his death to reopen his case but has not heard from them concerning it. They just recently sent her a letter in April denying her DIC stating the following:

1. We granted death pension benefits effective June 2, 2005

2. We couldn't approve your claim for accrued benefits

3. We have denied your claim for service connected death benefits, called dependency and indemnity compensation (DIC).

It goes on to state: How Did We Make Our Decision? We have enclosed a copy of your Rating Decision for your review. The reasons for our decision can be found in the section titled "Reasons for Decision" or Reasons and Bases."

My questions are the following:

1. There was no Rating Decision attached to the decision sent to her. She called VA in Cleveland, Ohio who issued her this decision and they stated that they do not have a rating decision. Can she appeal on this?

2. Therre was no Reasons for Decision or Reasons and Bases attached to the decision sent to her. Also can she appeal on this?

3. The death certificate states that immediate cause of death was Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease. Is this heart failure of some type. Please let us know what this is? One of the medication that VA was giving him was Atenolol for Heart/Blood Pressure. This leaves her to believe that this was solely for the Heart because he was taking Felodipine for his Blood Pressure. Also, Death Certificate states other significant conditions contributing to death, but not resulting in the underlying cause, etc. is Hypertension, B-Cell Lymphoma, Hyperlipidemix, and Lupus. Can someone tell us how we can connect Lymphoma to his death?

I realize this is a long e-mail, but I had to put all of the above for you to understand.

Thank in advance for your reply.

[Charleese]

Charleese-by "accrued" does she mean the retroactive pension amount?

Once the veteran is deceased and they have received any retro due them- then there are no more 'accrued ' benefits- but the VA should have made her pension award retroactive-if she filed the 21-534 within one year after his death.

Even if she did file this within that year- a wartime pension is based on income and they probably looked at the fact that she might have had money left from his retro and then they might have offset that from her pension amount.

When she gets the Reason and Bases that will tell her more-

The VBM makes the point that only if an accrued claim is filed within one year of the veterans death- only then can accrued benefits be determined if they should have been awarded to the veteran in his/her lifetime.

Also the DIC application- it must be filed within one year after death- this goes for the pension part of the DIC 21-534 application too-for benefits to be paid back to date of death. Otherwise they will use the date of application filed as the date they determine the retro from.

Hi Berta, thanks for your response. Do you have the link for online to VA so that she can let them know about her not receiving rating decision and reason and bases. I would appreciate it if you would post it. Both she and I tried getting in one but it failed to work. Thanks!

Ex: vet dies on August 8th, 2004 ,and spouse files DIC 21-534 app on Nov 7, 2005.

Vet had claim in progress for TDIU which was awarded posthumously in Dec 2005.

The VA does not owe the widow any accrued benefits per 38 CFR 3.1000© 2005

(38 USC 5121 ©

The VA also -whether they award DIC or pension -in this case-does not owe the widow any retro DIC or NCS pension

except for what goes back to the Nov 2005 filing date.

We had a widow here whose date of filing her DIC claim was decades after her husband's death.She won a lot of retro but it could not go back to his date of death- only to the date she filed the claim.

I believe you mean that she did obviously file within the year after death and maybe the VARO had misinterpreted her filing date ???

The Reasons and bases will tell much more.