03/11/2015 Substantive Appeal (Form 9) Ro

[waltbarb]

appeal 8/13/2013 to 03/11/2015 Substantive Appeal (Form 9) to RO long time now ?

[FormerMember]

Might be time to take a gander at a Form 9 and familiarize yourself with it. . BVA Appeals are conducted and decided at only one place-810 Vermont Ave. NW Washington DC 20420. A "Traveling Board" is a Veterans Law Judge (almost always one [1]) that holds a hearing at a local Regional Office face to face with you. He does not render a decision while at the Regional Office. At the conclusion of your hearing, the c-file, if still in analog mode, is then assembled for shipment, a Form 8 is tucked in and the whole shebang is forwarded to DC. If it is in the new VBMS digitized mode, it can be transmitted instantly via computer but still sits in limbo until the docket # assignment comes up. There, the same VLJ's staff attorneys will give it a one-day review for sufficiency. If there is something amiss, such as no SSI folder, it goes back to your RO for a remand (one year). If you signed a waiver in the first instance, it is remanded via the AMC-but still remanded back to the AOJ nevertheless. Things that delay it can also be your helpful VSO Team who takes it out of the library and puts it in his in basket for a six month snooze where the VLJ's troops cannot get at it.

VLJ's are currently cranking out 1.1 decisions per day. Take about 100 VLJs and that's 110 per day. Take 230 days a year available times 100 Judges and you see 24,000 decisions a year. The backlog is in the hundreds of thousands... Do the math. Find a hobby. Remodel the bath and the kitchen. Take up Macrame. Buy Rosetta Stone and learn French.

[waltbarb]

here my Form 9 Ro. thx for Replying.

[FormerMember]

Let me show you all something. A Form 9 should list the errors on your rating in Box 10 rather than why you should have won or been given a higher rating. You are mixing the two areas into one. First, you identify what VA did wrong in Box 10. Second, you explain why and what the proper outcome should have been in a separate argument. This is a major reason why VA gets to send these up to the BVA because the Veteran fails to state that which he disagrees with or mixes the arguments into one. This is Appeals 101. Don't feel bad. I made this error a thousand times before I learned how.

Edited March 17, 2015 by asknod

[waltbarb]

the va office in Lenoir nc. she did form 9 and send in. thx for tell me.

[FormerMember]

That's why Theresa and others like us began websites for Veterans. 16 hours of training on how to fill out 21-526s, 4138s and Form 9s isn't enough time to train Homer Simpson's monkey Mojo how to fetch a beer. While I certainly appreciate what VSOs do for us, their abilities in the world of Veteran's benefits are less than successful if we only win 15% of the time. Witness the large number here who regularly win and measure that against the Veteran populace as a whole. The statistics are extremely lopsided in our favor when we have the information with which to prevail.

[Buck52]

Great advice from asknod!

...................Buck!