Need Help With Appeal For Sick Father

[daughterneedshelp]

Greetings! I am looking for a Veterans Advocate group that can help me with my Father's service connected disability appeal. To make a very long story short, my dad has been working on this appeal for at least 5 years (if not longer). He was placed under hospice care recently and I was notified that he has been getting the runaround with this claim. Time is of the essence, so I'm trying to find groups that can help us get this claim handled before he passes. I have called Reps for Vets, however I have not received a return phone call, and now I'm looking for a similar group that can help me navigate what seems to be a very tricky process. If anyone has a group that they have worked with in the past that can help me, I would really appreciate it!

Thanks

[Pete53]

Welcome to Hadit. The VA will expedite claims for Veterans like your Dad but he has to ask them to do it.

[Berta]

I suggest you consider free claims help from any major vet org like the DAV, AL, VVA,etc or your county veterans service agency or state veterans affairs POA org to support a request to expedite his claim.REPS for Vets charges 20% of the award because they are lawyers.The vet orgs dont charge anything.

what is he claiming and what is the VA's reason for denying it?

We have many seasoned advocates here who have lots experience with the VA claims process and we are free.

If we know more as to why VA denied him maybe we can help more.

[Berta]

Maybe I should clarify that-----------

even if VA expedites a claim- they could be expediting another denial-

Can you scan and attach here a copy of his last denial (cover personal stuff such as name, c file number)

as,with that, we might be able to help more.

[daughterneedshelp]

I will see what I can find. This is one of the issues with trying to handle this, and being brought in so late. My dad has demensia, so the days before he became incompacitated were hectic to say the least, it is hard to find what he has done and where. I have tried to work with the DAV and they have just said that we needed to wait on a response (not much help at all). Can you tell me what the other acronyms are - AL and VVA so I can find out about these groups?

I saw that Reps for Vets charged a fee, however I was wondering if there are paid representatives on his case that they might be able to get something done faster only because we are uncertain how much time my dad has left.

Thanks for the quick response.

[Xnavynuke]

Here is what I would recommend. 1. Get your father to make his mark on or sign a request for a complete c-file. Fax to the RO or hand deliver it. 2. Contact your local congressperson, and request that they get involved to expedite the request. 3. Pick up the file if at all possible from the RO. 4. Take the file to a VSO (preferably DAV, state, american legion, vfw, etc...). 5. Get with the VSO and develop a plan of attack to appeal the previous denial. 6. Post pertinent details here for further advice also. (be sure to cover identifying info if using scans.

[carlie]

I hope the following will not be the case.

I believe that if your father should pass while a claim/issues are pending

his spouse can take over prosecution of the claim issues.

There are certain steps that would need to be taken.

Hopefully other's will chime in on this too.