Getting compensation for a military-related injury can be time consuming and difficult, especially if you're missing some key evidence. Veterans Affairs (VA) officials have to thwart fraud at every opportunity, meaning that if your claim doesn't check all of the required boxes, it may be rejected along with any fraudulent claims or delayed as the VA asks you for more information. To avoid the delays and extended queues, here are a few ways to push through the claim faster and some reasons why your claim or appeal may have a problem.

The Service-Connected Check 

Although the VA provides many services for all veterans, the VA disability-compensation program has a specific level of monetary compensation and medical assistance that is reserved for veterans who were disabled because of military service.

Fraud is of course a concern, but honest veterans could run into denial as well. For example, a veteran who gets into a car accident after being discharged from the military would need to seek other avenues for compensation because the accident wasn't during military service. The VA will certainly help you find a lawyer or provide basic medical treatment similar to that found at a doctor's office, but the compensation isn't available for such situations.

You'll need to prove your injury or condition's connection to the military through documentation. Word of mouth or even showing off wounds to VA personnel is not enough; you need to prove that the condition came from military service and nowhere else.

For most veterans, this means having something relevant to the injury in their military medical record. If a doctor's testament to your condition is in the record and can be verified, that's your best chance. If you've complained about an issue but never got a definitive agreement from a doctor, your evidence is still relevant, but it doesn't create a perfect claim-approval situation.

If you're lacking evidence and have been delayed because of further evidence gathering, or if you've been denied, it's time to get an attorney.

A Personal-Injury Attorney

Arguing injury connections is a difficult process if you don't have a definite "yes, X injury was caused by Y" from a medical professional in any compensation system. This requires you to be both a medical expert and a legal expert as you figure out how to get the evidence you need and how to link it to military service in legally binding language.

One big problem in injury cases is pain. It's hard to prove pain unless there are scars or underlying damage that can be either observed by the medical professional's eye or through devices such as a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system. You can claim that a specific situation caused the problem and can even point to your military record, but if you're lacking that definitive agreement, a lawyer can find more supporting evidence.

Such evidence could be surveying other veterans at your previous duty station or in similar situations to show a trend. By showing that your situation was a situational hazard and likely to have caused your problem, you could win with a presumptive claim case that may not 100% confirm your injury's military connection but that has enough legal backing to be close enough.

Contact a personal-injury lawyer such as Charles Aaron PLC, have all of your written documentation copied and ready, and be prepared to discuss as much of your military past as necessary to get the compensation you deserve.