Change the Story: Don't be DELAYED, DENIED, or DEFEATED by the Veterans Administration or the Social Security Administration

Are you disabled and suffering from the “DELAY, DENY, DEFEAT” tactics of the Veterans Administration or the Social Security Administration? Your sad, frustrating story joins those of many other people who deserve disability benefits and aren’t getting them. There ARE ways you (and your attorney) can strategically handle these agencies and their vast bureaucracies to maximize the chances of a happy ending to your story.

When a claim is DELAYED by the agency, there are NOT a lot of ways to light a fire under the agency to speed things up. Sometimes if you have a terminal illness or a foreclosure notice or eviction notice, the agency MAY speed things up for you but I have learned that’s usually the exception to the rule. The best advice in any case is to cooperate with the agency promptly. If they send you or your client a work history report to complete, get it filled out as quickly and completely as possible even if you think the agency already has this information. When the agency wants to send you for an examination by one of their doctors, fully cooperate and be sure to attend the exam; if you don’t, they will often try to reschedule it for you and this makes the process take longer. If someone from the agency calls and needs information, give it to them now.

When a claim is DENIED by the agency, don’t give up; appeal the decision immediately. You normally have at least 60 days to appeal (read the denial to find out the appeal deadline in your particular case), but DON'T wait that long. If possible, appeal the decision the same day you receive it. Make sure you file the appeal on the appropriate form and that you send it to the appropriate place; at different levels of the agency’s process, you may have to send things to a new address or fax number. When you appeal by fax or online, ALWAYS make sure you receive confirmation and save that information; if you do not receive confirmation, your appeal probably didn’t go through. This can be fatal to the claim if you figure out four months later that the agency didn’t receive the appeal. If you miss a deadline for appeal, you may have to start the claim all over. Nobody wants to do that—you lose time AND you probably lose money.

When you have filed the appeal, you get denied again, and you feel DEFEATED, you can appeal to a federal court for help with the claim.  Some people try to file their own federal court appeals and I have never seen it work out well for a disabled claimant. They don’t know the rules, they don’t know the laws, regulations, statutes, etc., and they certainly don’t know the trends in new case law and the best arguments for winning the case. You certainly have the RIGHT to appeal the case yourself but first ask whether that’s the smart thing to do. Federal court appeals involve meeting lots of deadlines and writing “briefs” (documents in which you set forth your legal arguments about why you should have won your claim); your briefs have to be typed a certain way, follow a prescribed format, and must be filed properly.

      The moral of the story when the agency tries to DELAY, DENY, and DEFEAT you is to get some help from an experienced advocate. I recently represented a woman who had lost her home because she had been DELAYED and DENIED; she appealed and went to her administrative hearing alone. The administrative law judge, acting as a villain in the story, engaged in some shady tactics he never would have tried if she’d had an experienced attorney like me on her side. She felt DEFEATED and hopeless and finally got some help. She hired me, we appealed that judge’s decision (which involved a letter from me, pointing out the errors he had made in finding her not disabled), and we won. I wish she had come to me earlier so the happy ending to her story could have happened sooner.

      If you’ve had enough of DELAY, DENY and DEFEAT from the VA or the Social Security Administration, get some help from a VSO or Legal Aid. I’d also be happy to talk to you (for free) about your case to see if I think I can help you. I help people all over the U.S.; you don’t pay anything up front and you don't pay me if YOU don't get paid. Call Lisa at 1-800-580-9335, email me at [email protected], or message me on Facebook @VADisabilityHelp, Twitter @DisabledVetLaw or LinkedIn at www.dhirubhai.net/in/lisamcnairpalmer

Best,

Lisa McNair Palmer, Esq.

*An important point: this article is not legal advice and I am not your attorney

unless and until we sign some documents that say I represent you.