Good News?

[88 mike]

I found out last week that a decision was made on my claim for temporary 100%. I had surgery for a service connected disability on September 1, 2010. I still have not been cleared to go back to work yet. I have a couple questions: I did not file until March 2011 due to that fact of me not knowing about temporary 100% and bad information from the VA. My question is will they pay me retroactive effective september 2010 or when I filed? My other question is how long can I receive temporary 100%?

[jbasser]

The first of the month following surgury is the date of entitlement.

J

[broncovet]

Your effective date is the later of the "facts found" or when you first applied. The "facts found" means the date the doc says you are disabled. The VA does not give a rip about the months or years we did not apply for a benefit because we did not know about it. It also does not matter if a VA employee gives you bad information. Its like the IRS. If you call the irs and say, "Can I deduct the cost of video games?" The employee can say "Sure, why not". Later when you deduct them, you could bring a recording of the conversation to the court, and you still would have to pay the taxes, penalties, interest and fees. With the IRS, or the VA, only certain employees are designated to "bind" the goverment, and the others are pretty much "helpers". The ones you talk to on the phone cant "bind" the government but they can give you their opinion. Even if you talked to a rating specialist, your rating decision needs to be "in writing" and his conversation would not necessarily "bind" the government, since your rating has to go "through channels" and be subject to a supervisor override before it is mailed out. While one rating specialist said his supervisor did not "override" him ever, just because something did not happen in the past does not guarntee it wont happen in the future. Just because one has not ever been married in 30 years of living, does not guarntee he can not get married in the future.

On question number 2, this is a big topic of conversation at the VA. The VA is supposed to "follow up" on temporary total and remove them promplty, but apparently they have not always done that, so some have received temp total for years. If the VA "makes a mistake" and pays you temporary total when you did not deserve it, it is unlikely that you would have to pay that money back, but they could still drop you down to a lower level.

I think there are different lengths of temporary total for different surgeries, since some take longer to heal than others. You could try sending an IRIS email and asking how long your temp total will be.

Then, when doing your planning, I would plan on your rating going back to where it was before temp total, even tho the VA may screw up and not do this right away. If you are able to go back to work in x weeks or months, consistent with the period of temp total, then you should be ok.

Edited July 19, 2011 by broncovet