VA Retroactive Pay: How Long Does it Take?
When veterans have suffered an injury or contracted an illness in relation to their service, and that condition left the veteran disabled, they are entitled to disability benefits. Claims can take a long time for the VA to process. Once your claim has been approved, the VA will owe you retroactive pay for the time you waited for your approval. They claim that veterans will receive this payment within 15 days of approval. However, it can often take much longer.
Why Does It Take So Long to Get Disability Benefits?
There are many great benefits available to veterans. Unfortunately, the VA tends to often move at a snail’s pace. The backlog for disability claims is a mile long, and it typically takes months, if not years, to receive approval for your claim. If there is any issue with your claim it can take even longer, especially if your initial claim gets denied and you have to file an appeal.
In order to ensure that veterans receive their benefits in a somewhat timely manner, many will hire a VA disability lawyer at the beginning of the filing process. While a lawyer isn’t strictly necessary at this point, they can help to ensure that you have everything in order and avoid a denial of your claim.
If your claim gets denied, then you will certainly need a lawyer to handle your appeal. If your claim is approved, then an experienced VA lawyer can help ensure that the VA sticks to its promise of sending you your back pay within 15 days. Otherwise, you may have to wait additional months for this needed money.
How Are Disability Benefits Calculated?
The main factor in determining how much you will receive for disability benefits is your disability rating. The disability rating system can be a bit of a nightmare for those trying to navigate it. To get the maximum disability benefits available, a veteran must have a disability rating of 100%.
Unless a veteran has a single disability that is rated at 100%, it can be very difficult to get to that desired number. All of the math involved in determining a disability rating, and the amount of money you receive, is a bit wonky. The reason that a 100% disability rating is so much more appealing than a 90% rating is that a 90% rating does not pay out at 90% of a full rating.
While a 100% rating will result in a veteran receiving nearly $3,000 a month, a 90% rating doesn’t come in near $2,700, as you might infer from the 90%. Instead, a 90% rating results in a veteran receiving less than $1,800 a month. A 90% rating gets a vet a monthly payment of approximately 60% of a full benefit.
While a veteran can receive a rating of 100% if they have a single injury that gets them a 100% rating, it can be very difficult otherwise. If a veteran has two separate injuries that are both rated at 50%, they are not considered to have a 100% disability rating. Instead of adding the disabilities together, the rating system deals with percentages of percentages.
The first injury rated at 50% leaves a veteran a veteran 50% disabled and 50% able-bodied. The next 50% is weighted against the able-bodied rating. 50% of 50% is 25%. In addition to the 50% disability rating from the first injury, an additional 25% gets added for the second injury. The veteran is now 75% disabled.
Disability ratings are always rounded to the nearest 10%, so two disabilities of 50% would leave a vet with a total disability rating of 80%. If the veteran continued to add disabilities of 50%, it would take until the fifth disability to cross the 95% mark and receive a 100% rating.
The VA claims that the reason for this system is because nobody can be over 100% disabled. However, since it would be easy enough to simply put a cap on disability once you reach the 100% rating, it feels more like a flimsy excuse to pay disabled veterans less money for the injuries and illnesses that they suffered in service to their country. You can use a VA retro disability calculator to quickly calculate what your disability rating should be.
The Help of a Professional
Bringing in a qualified VA disability lawyer at any point in the process is never a bad idea. A competent attorney knows all of the ins and out of the system. They can help to make sure that you get both the maximum amount in benefits to which you are entitled and that you get them as quickly as possible.
Your disability doesn’t wait until you get your payment to affect your life the quicker you can get the money to which you are entitled, the better.
