Are you one of Fort Wayne’s over 8,000 veterans without a service-connected disability? If you’re missing out on benefits because a claim the VA ought to have approved was instead denied, Hill & Ponton is ready to take up your appeal.
And if you are among the estimated 3,809 local veterans who do have a VA rating, but yours doesn’t match the severity of your health problems, we can fight to get that percentage put right.
Our law firm stands for veterans turned down flat and for those handed ratings far below what they earned. Our attorneys are VA-accredited and disability is all we do. Contact us for a free evaluation: we are paid only when your appeal prevails.
Our Legal Assistance to Fort Wayne Veterans
- Disability Compensation: We fight to win the largest monthly award your service-connected condition justifies, together with the back pay that piled up from the moment your eligibility first began.
- VA Disability Appeals: A denial or a lowball rating is never the last word. We take command of the appeal, study the record cover to cover, hunt down the documents the VA skipped, secure expert opinions, and put the claim forward the way it should have been.
- Rating Increases: Conditions deteriorate. Once yours has progressed past the VA’s most recent decision, we gather the proof and press for the higher percentage (and the larger monthly award) you have since grown into.
- Special Monthly Compensation: When the injury is among the most severe, it can open the door to Special Monthly Compensation, which pays above the standard rating schedule.
- Individual Unemployability: When your conditions rule out full-time work, TDIU can pay you at the 100 percent rate even when your combined rating comes in lower. We pull together the vocational and medical evidence such a claim demands.
- DIC and Survivor Benefits: When a service-connected condition turns fatal, a surviving spouse, child, or dependent parent may have a claim to Dependency and Indemnity Compensation. We stand beside grieving families appealing wrongful VA decisions.
Turning a Rating Into Monthly Pay
The VA assigns each condition a rating that climbs by tens, from 10 percent up to 100, and your tax-free monthly payment rises right along with it. The steeper the rating, the heavier the check.
When multiple disabilities are rated, the VA feeds the figures through its combined-ratings system, which is why a thorough, well-backed filing makes such a difference to the result.
Want a rough idea of the total? Drop your ratings into the VA disability calculator.
As of 2026, a single veteran with no dependents collects up to $3,938.58 each month (and higher amounts are available for veterans with dependents).
- 10%: $180.42
- 20%: $356.66
- 30%: $552.47
- 40%: $795.84
- 50%: $1,132.90
- 60%: $1,435.02
- 70%: $1,808.45
- 80%: $2,102.15
- 90%: $2,362.30
- 100%: $3,938.58
The federal payment is only part of it. Fort Wayne veterans are also eligible for Indiana state veteran benefits, property-tax relief among them, that loosen the monthly squeeze.
Work with us to get your Benefits
Winning a Toxic Exposure Claim
Northeastern Indiana’s military presence, past and present, has left environmental hazards in its wake. A serious illness traced to a contaminated installation, whether here or anywhere else you were stationed, can form the basis of a compensation claim.
- Fort Wayne Air National Guard Station (the 122nd Fighter Wing, based at Fort Wayne International Airport, the former Baer Field): Years of firefighting-foam use pushed PFOS and PFOA, the so-called forever chemicals, into the ground at the installation. A Defense Department site inspection confirmed the contamination and called for a deeper cleanup investigation.
- Grissom Air Reserve Base (about 75 miles southwest, near Peru): The same class of firefighting foam tainted Grissom’s groundwater with PFOS and PFOA, and the Defense Department now has the base under active cleanup review. A veteran who served there and developed a related condition has every reason to dig into it.
- Shelbyville Army Aviation Support Facility (about 130 miles south of Fort Wayne): Decades of firefighting-foam use at this facility pushed PFAS into the groundwater. Veterans who served at this site and later developed an illness may be eligible for compensation due to toxic exposure.
Should your service have carried you across either base, or any other site (in Indiana or elsewhere) later tied to contamination, an old denial does not have to be where the matter ends. For years our attorneys have linked veterans’ illnesses to the toxins responsible, from Agent Orange to TCE and PFAS, and recovered the benefits they had coming.
The Three Pieces of a Successful Claim
Three things settle a VA disability claim, and a soft spot in any one of them usually ends in a denial.
- A diagnosis you can show now. A clinician, at the VA or in private practice, must put on record that you still live with the condition today.
- A tie to your service. The record has to capture an event, injury, illness, or exposure in uniform that could have produced the condition or driven it downhill.
- A medical nexus. A qualified expert has to bind service to condition, deciding the connection is “at least as likely as not” to blame. That is the junction where most claims fall apart, so the weight of that opinion is everything.
Our VA disability attorneys know the way the agency reads evidence, the slips that doom claims, and how to build a case that finally reflects what you truly contend with.
Tell us about your case
When a VA Lawyer Makes the Difference
Filing the first claim on your own is fine, and most veterans take that route. The picture changes once a denial shows up, or a rating comes back that ignores just how rough your days have become. That is the moment skilled representation can tip the balance.
Our entire practice is organized around steering veterans through the complicated VA appeals process. When a claim jams up behind absent proof or a decision that makes no sense, we pry the file open, locate the trouble, and put the case back together. We have done it for veterans coast to coast, and we are glad to take it on for the Fort Wayne community.
We keep abreast of every twist in VA disability law, from agency memos to appellate rulings, and we turn that into leverage for the higher ratings, unemployability, and special compensation you are owed. Looking over your situation costs nothing, and we are paid only when we win. If the VA has left you out in the cold, get in touch and we will help you back in.
VA Offices and Services Near Fort Wayne
- Fort Wayne VA Medical Center – One of the two hospitals in the VA Northern Indiana Health Care System, with inpatient, primary, specialty, and mental health care for the region; its sister campus is the Marion VA Medical Center, about 50 miles southwest. 2121 Lake Avenue, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. Phone: 260-426-5431
- Fort Wayne VA Clinic – An outpatient clinic handling primary and routine care closer to home. 2500 East State Boulevard, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. Phone: 260-426-5431
- Fort Wayne Vet Center – Confidential readjustment and PTSD counseling plus community outreach, run separately from the medical center. 3810 Coldwater Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. Phone: 260-460-1456
- Allen County Veterans Service Office – County service officers who help local veterans and their families prepare and manage claims at no cost. Rousseau Centre, 1 East Main Street, Room 106, Fort Wayne, IN 46802. Phone: 260-449-7861
- Indianapolis VA Regional Benefit Office – Indiana’s only VA regional office, which processes the disability claims of Fort Wayne veterans. 575 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204. National benefits line: 800-827-1000
Resources for Veterans Facing Homelessness
The 2025 Point-in-Time count covering the Indiana Balance of State Continuum of Care, the federal reporting region that spans Fort Wayne and most of the state, recorded 218 homeless veterans. Veterans losing their footing, or already on the street, can turn to a network of VA programs and government services aimed at lasting stability.
Out of the Fort Wayne VA Medical Center, the VA Northern Indiana Health Care System runs homeless-veteran services that fold together HUD-VASH vouchers and VA case management, the Health Care for Homeless Veterans program, and Grant and Per Diem transitional housing, alongside connections to mental health care, addiction treatment, and help finding work.
At Hill & Ponton, we have seen far too many households where a delayed or wrongly denied disability check sat at the center of a housing crisis. That is why homeless and at-risk veterans hold a special priority in our practice.
If you are facing hardship due to an unfavorable VA decision, we can help you fight back, with nothing owed up front and a fee due only if your appeal succeeds. Reach out and we will size up where your claim stands at no charge.
Meet Our Expert Legal Team
VA Disability Attorneys and professionals championing veterans in Fort Wayne, Indiana and nationwide.
Button LabelLet Us Fight For Your Benefits
Need help appealing a VA decision? Contact our disability lawyers for a free evaluation of your claim.
Button Label