I Nine Appeal Sent/5103 Online

[air1]

My lawyer mailed I 9 appeal form in to VA and sent me a copy,I later 10 days was checking my claim on benefits and it said if no further evidence click to have claim process instead of waiting,I think it was 5103 form.Does this affect my appeal and can I still send an Ime that I'm planning to get for acquired mental.Claim shows eligibility determination.

Edited August 2, 2015 by air1

[Berta]

You should have filed a 5103 already, if it was for the same I-9 appeal.

Your lawyer will know if you did that.

When the IME is done, if favorable to the claim, send it, with USPS tracking slip directly to the BVA when you get a BVA docket number. Check with the BVA ombudsman after a week or two have passed, to make sure they received it.

[FormerMember]

First of all, let allow me to clear something up. Until 1994, the substantive appeals form was a Form 1-9 as in One dash nine. It then became simply a Form Nine with no hyphenation. Lawyers now call it a VA 9.

When you file now, the BVA rarely remands unless something major is missing or was overlooked such as lack of SSI/SSD files. Usually they send it to their private Regional Office which we call the Appeals Management Center (AMC) to correct it. It's right around the corner from 810 VArmit Ave. NW on Eye Street.

If you file the VA 9 and do not include any new and material evidence, VA will ask you politely if you are finished sending in information or evidence. If you sign off on the 5103 form, as they call it, you are asking VA to proceed with the adjudication as you have nothing else to include.

It sounds as though you have extra exculpatory evidence you wish to include in the form of an IMO/IME. If that is the case, you should note on the 5103 that you do, indeed, have N&M evidence to submit. However, if it is a "new" claim, as in one you have never mentioned before, you should not introduce it into this one. File a separate claim for it. It would have to be peeled off and remanded -or acted on as a separate claim anyway. The BVA tends to complete your first claim you are filing the VA 9 on and remand the "new" claim for initial review at your local Regional Office. This will, in most cases, hold your new claim hostage in DC until you get an up or down on the one you appealed.

We now have a budding VBMS electronic records system and this allows your c-file to be in two places simultaneously-technically. VA is slowly getting into this method. In sum, you cannot tack on a new, unadjudicated claim in the first instance to an appeal.

[broncovet]

Alex posted:

" In sum, you cannot tack on a new, unadjudicated claim in the first instance to an appeal."

This is a real problem. I guess this means the only way to "appeal" an issue that VARO failed to adjuticate, is to file a Writ of Mandamus, since we dont have a method to dispute an unadjuticated claim at the BVA. Im referring to issues that VA failed to adjuticate, for years, sometimes decades.

38 CFR 3.103 requires VA give us written notice of any decision that affects our benefits. So, what happens when they dont adjuticate it?

[air1]

Thanks for info,but the independent medical exam would be because the denial of the claim I am appealing not for new claim.So if I get the independent exam do I send to RO if not received by bva when completed.