More than 117,000 veterans across Indiana already receive monthly VA disability payments, as recorded in the VA’s FY2025 Annual Benefits Report, yet thousands more remain stuck behind a denial or a rating that sells their service short. If the VA has gotten your claim wrong, Hill & Ponton is ready to set it right.
We are VA-accredited attorneys who do one thing: appeal denied and underrated claims. We know the evidence the VA expects, the missteps that sink applications, and how to assemble a case that holds up under review.
Whether the VA turned you down, lowballed you, or silently closed the case, we can pick the claim up and carry it forward. Reviewing your case costs nothing, and we collect no fee unless we win.
Our Legal Services for Indiana Veterans
- Disability Compensation: We help veterans secure the monthly payment a service-connected condition warrants, building the record with service files, medical evidence, and independent expert opinions so nothing the VA needs is left out.
- Appeals: If the VA says no to a claim or pins it with a rating that understates the condition, we run the challenge from start to finish and press the agency to correct what it got wrong.
- Rating Increases: Once a condition has worsened beyond your last VA rating decision, we document the decline and fight for the bigger rating, and the heavier monthly check, it now justifies.
- Survivor Benefits: We support the spouses, children, and parents of veterans whose deaths trace to service, guiding them through DIC and survivor claims.
- Special Monthly Compensation: Veterans with the most severe disabilities, such as losing a limb, blindness, or the need for aid and attendance, may qualify for support above the standard 100% disability rate.
- Total Disability Based on Individual Unemployability: When steady, full-time work is no longer possible because of service-connected conditions, TDIU pays at the 100% rate even if the combined rating is lower. We gather the medical and vocational proof these claims rely on.
What Compensation and Benefits Are Available to You?
Your compensation and your access to care both grow out of a single number: the VA disability rating. Set by the agency, it gauges how heavily a service-connected condition weighs on your daily life and your ability to work.
The scale moves in ten-point stages between 10% and 100%, and the tax-free monthly payment grows as the rating climbs. With more than one condition, the VA applies a combined-ratings formula that often lands below what veterans expect, which is why precision matters; even a modest increase in your rating can lift the monthly check.
The monthly payment for a single Indiana veteran without dependents currently looks like this:
- 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
These figures climb with annual cost-of-living adjustments, and veterans supporting a spouse, children, or a dependent parent receive more.
On top of federal compensation, Indiana offers its own benefits for disabled veterans, from property tax deductions to education assistance and hiring preference for state employment.
If your current rating does not capture the full toll of your condition, Hill & Ponton can press the VA for a higher rating so that every linked benefit stays on the table.
Work with us to get your benefits
When Should You Hire a VA Disability Lawyer?
Many veterans handle the opening claim on their own, and it frequently works out. But after a denial, or a rating wildly out of step with the condition, professional help can change the outcome.
The appeals process turns on tight deadlines and rules that keep changing, where one missed form or buried record can cost you months. A VA-accredited attorney puts a guide who knows the system on your side.
At Hill & Ponton, VA disability is the entirety of our practice; we concentrate on denied and underrated appeals, recovering records, securing medical opinions, and showing exactly how a disability shapes a veteran’s daily life and ability to earn a living.
Your VA Appeal Options
- Supplemental Claim: Submit new and relevant evidence, such as a fresh diagnosis or records the VA never reviewed, and ask the agency to take another look.
- Higher-Level Review: Ask a more senior reviewer to reexamine the file when you believe the VA made a mistake. No new evidence is added, but clear errors can be resolved faster this way.
- Board of Veterans’ Appeals: The last stage, which offers a direct-review docket, an evidence docket, or a hearing with a Veterans Law Judge.
When the VA will not acknowledge how much your condition takes from you, we can take over. A case review is free, nothing is owed upfront, and our fee is only collected upon winning. Get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how we can help.
Winning Your VA Disability Appeal
Too many Indiana veterans get stuck waiting or appealing because the VA never received the right proof, or never tied the condition to service. Three elements decide a claim:
- Current diagnosis: a licensed provider documents the condition you have today.
- In-service event: the record reflects an injury, illness, event, or exposure in uniform capable of causing or aggravating it.
- Nexus: a medical opinion connects the two, stating the link is “at least as likely as not.”
Even a strong case can come apart when one piece runs thin. Indiana claims most often stumble over:
- No documented medical tie linking the condition to your service
- Medical records that are thin or out of date
- Missed appeal or evidence deadlines
- VA missteps in interpreting service files or medical history
Hill & Ponton focuses on VA disability appeals. We team with trusted medical experts for persuasive nexus opinions and see that every appeal is thorough, precise, and submitted ahead of deadline.
Get a free case evaluation
VA Disability for Toxic Exposure
Indiana has hosted active-duty, Guard, and shuttered military installations with known or suspected contamination. Veterans who spent time on or near these sites and later developed related conditions may be entitled to compensation.
- Grissom Air Reserve Base (Peru): Long-running firefighting-foam use drove PFOS and PFOA into the groundwater at the base.
- Indiana Army Ammunition Plant (Charlestown): Decades of munitions production left explosives residue such as RDX and TNT, plus heavy metals, in the soil and water, and the site is under PFAS investigation.
- Naval Avionics Center / Naval Air Warfare Center (Indianapolis): Industrial operations drove the solvents TCE and vinyl chloride, along with metals like arsenic, into the groundwater.
- Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane (Crane): Solvents, PCBs, and firefighting foam contaminated parts of this sprawling southwest-Indiana installation.
- Fort Wayne Air National Guard Station (Fort Wayne): Firefighting foam at the 122nd Fighter Wing left PFOS and PFOA in the ground, and a Defense Department site inspection called for a deeper cleanup investigation.
- Shelbyville Army Aviation Support Facility (Shelbyville): Many years of firefighting-foam use drove PFAS into the groundwater and soil at the facility.
Other sites, including the former Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, carry their own contamination histories. If a toxic exposure is tied to your illness, you may be owed compensation even after an earlier denial. Our attorneys handle these appeals across the state and are paid only after winning.
Legal Resources and Lawyers Near You
Indianapolis
Indianapolis VA Regional Benefit Office: 575 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204. Phone: 800-827-1000
Fort Wayne
Allen County Veterans Service Office: Rousseau Centre, 1 East Main Street, Room 106, Fort Wayne, IN 46802. Phone: 260-449-7861
Indiana VA Facilities Serving Veterans
Veterans Service Offices
- Indianapolis VA Regional Benefit Office: 575 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204. Phone: 800-827-1000
- Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs: 777 North Meridian Street, Suite 300, Indianapolis, IN 46204. Phone: 317-232-3910
- Marion County Office of Veteran Services: 200 East Washington Street, Suite 2501, Indianapolis, IN 46204. Phone: 317-327-8387
- Allen County Veterans Service Office: 1 East Main Street, Room 106, Fort Wayne, IN 46802. Phone: 260-449-7861
VA Medical Centers
- Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center: 1481 West 10th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202. Phone: 317-554-0000
- Fort Wayne VA Medical Center (VA Northern Indiana Health Care System): 2121 Lake Avenue, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. Phone: 260-426-5431
- Marion VA Medical Center (VA Northern Indiana Health Care System): 1700 East 38th Street, Marion, IN 46953. Phone: 765-674-3321
VA Clinics and Vet Centers
- Indianapolis VA Clinic: 777 North Meridian Street, Suite 200, Indianapolis, IN 46204. Phone: 317-554-0000
- Brownsburg VA Clinic: 557 Pit Road, Brownsburg, IN 46112. Phone: 317-858-2700
- Fort Wayne VA Clinic: 2500 East State Boulevard, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. Phone: 260-426-5431
- Indianapolis Vet Center: 6330 West 71st Street, Indianapolis, IN 46278. Phone: 317-423-1680
- Fort Wayne Vet Center: 3810 Coldwater Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. Phone: 260-460-1456
Housing Assistance and Support for Indiana Veterans
Run from the Roudebush, Fort Wayne, and Marion VA medical centers, the VA’s homeless-veteran programs connect Indiana veterans to HUD-VASH vouchers, Health Care for Homeless Veterans, Grant and Per Diem transitional housing, and case management. Supportive Services for Veteran Families adds rapid rehousing and prevention across both urban and rural counties.
The 2025 Point-in-Time count identified 343 homeless veterans across the state on a single night. Many more could be at risk. And while VA and government programs work to move those veterans toward lasting housing, a denied or delayed disability check often sits at the heart of a housing crisis.
At Hill & Ponton, we know that there are many households whose stability rides on a fair rating and a single wrong decision puts all of it at risk. We give priority to veterans facing housing insecurity or unemployment, and charge nothing unless we win. Get in touch with us and we will look at the claim at no cost to you.
Meet Our Expert Legal Team
VA Disability Attorneys and professionals championing veterans throughout Indiana and nationwide.
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