Veterans often leave the VA claims process feeling more frustrated than when they began. The system can be impersonal, confusing, and exhausting, especially when you are living with a disability every day and VA does not recognize how much it affects your life. Hill & Ponton was created to offer veterans a different kind of experience.
Founded by a veteran, our law firm has remained focused on one mission: helping disabled veterans challenge unfair VA decisions and recover the benefits they earned through their service. VA disability law is all we do. For 40 years, our attorneys have helped veterans navigate the rules, evidence requirements, and bureaucratic roadblocks that can stand between them and the compensation they deserve.
If VA denied your claim or assigned a rating that does not reflect the full impact of your disability, Hill & Ponton is ready to help, with no upfront costs. Tell us what happened, and let our experience in VA disability appeals work for you.
Our Legal Services for Massachusetts Veterans
- Disability Compensation: An appeal should secure the monthly rate the evidence supports, together with the back pay the VA withheld across every month the wrong decision stayed in force.
- Appeals: We take on refusals and ratings set beneath what the evidence supports, and we stay with a case until a decision-maker answers for it.
- Rating Increases: Conditions rarely hold still. When yours has advanced past the percentage on file, we document the change and go after the higher tier.
- Survivor Benefits: Families left behind by a service-connected death hold a claim in their own right, and we pursue DIC and survivor support on their behalf.
- Special Monthly Compensation: Severe losses, amputation among them, blindness, or a constant need for aid and attendance can lift payment above the standard 100% ceiling.
- Total Disability Based on Individual Unemployability: A veteran whose service-connected conditions have ended steady work may be paid at the 100% rate through TDIU despite a lower combined figure. We build the vocational and medical record that supports it.
What Compensation and Benefits Are Available to You?
Nearly every VA benefit keys off one number: the rating, a percentage the VA sets according to how much a service-connected condition limits daily activity and earning capacity.
Ratings climb in ten-point steps to 100%, each step paying more each month, tax free. Several conditions get merged by a formula that discounts everything after the first, so a single percentage set too low quietly shrinks the whole award; even a modest rating increase shows up in the deposit.
Current monthly rates for a Massachusetts veteran with no 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
Dependents lift each figure, and the yearly cost-of-living adjustment lifts them all again.
Massachusetts State Benefits
Beyond the federal check, Massachusetts adds benefits of its own, and three of them turn directly on the rating we fight for:
- A state annuity of $2,500 a year, sent as one payment to a Massachusetts resident whom the VA either rates 100% service-connected or pays at the 100% rate. A veteran on TDIU satisfies the second test.
- Local property tax relief that opens at a 10% rating, worth $400 off the bill or the tax on $2,000 of assessed value, whichever saves more, and reaches a complete exemption for a veteran who is paraplegic or blind from service.
- Vehicle fee and tax exemptions at the RMV under the state’s HERO Act. Registration fees, driver’s license transaction fees and the excise tax on one non-commercial passenger vehicle or pick-up truck all come off for a veteran the VA rates at 100% or deems unemployable because of a service-connected disability. Sales tax on that vehicle is waived too, though the RMV requires Disabled Veteran plates on it, and those plates take a 60% rating built from conditions that affect ambulation.
A rating pinned below the truth of a condition can close off every one of those. Correcting it is the work we do.
Work with us to get your benefits
When Should You Hire a VA Disability Lawyer?
Massachusetts veterans commonly file the opening claim themselves and get where they need to go. But a denial changes everything.
This firm practices VA disability law and nothing besides. We take denied and undervalued claims, run down the records nobody requested, commission the medical opinions, and put the case in the shape a rater or a judge expects to receive it.
Your VA Appeal Options
- Supplemental Claim: Puts new and relevant evidence in front of the VA, from a fresh diagnosis to records that never made the file, and asks for a new decision.
- Higher-Level Review: Hands the file, unchanged, to a more experienced adjudicator to find the error in it.
- Board of Veterans’ Appeals: Takes the case to a Veterans Law Judge by direct review, on an added-evidence docket, or at a hearing.
When the VA will not credit what a condition has taken from you, we make it answer. A first look costs nothing, we ask for no money up front, and only get paid if you get paid.
What Does It Take to Win Your VA Disability Appeal?
- Current diagnosis: medical records establishing that you carry the condition today.
- In-service event: the exposure, wound or illness itself, shown in service records or through credible statements from people who were there.
- Nexus: a competent medical opinion placing the odds that service caused the condition at “at least as likely as not”.
We retain medical experts whose opinions carry weight, file complete and inside the deadline, and argue the record the way lawyers do. Some of the weak points we spend our days repairing are:
- Nexus opinions that equivocate instead of concluding
- Treatment records the VA never went looking for
- Examinations weighed wrongly or passed over
- Filing windows that closed while a veteran waited
VA Disability for Toxic Exposure
Four Massachusetts installations sit on the federal cleanup rolls, and a veteran who served at one and later fell ill may hold a claim worth pursuing.
- Fort Devens (Ayer, Shirley, Lancaster and Harvard): Added to the National Priorities List in 1989. Arsenic in the groundwater at the post’s Shepley’s Hill Landfill is the primary risk driver behind the cleanup, and the same effort reaches PFOS and PFOA plus a PCE plume at the former Moore Army Airfield that shrank from 15.5 acres in 2004 to 6.81 acres in 2018.
- Hanscom Air Force Base (Bedford): Listed in 1994, with 22 possible sources of contamination identified on land the Air Force has owned or leased. The list takes in former fire-training activities, the disposal of waste oils, solvents, paint thinners and degreasers, landfills, sludge disposal, petroleum releases and the dispensing of jet fuel and aviation gasoline. In December 2022 the Air Force moved to fold two firefighting-foam release sites into the cleanup, and the PFAS investigation there is still under way.
- South Weymouth Naval Air Station (Weymouth, Abington and Rockland): Placed on the National Priorities List in 1994.
- Fort Devens Sudbury Training Annex (Hudson, Stow, Maynard and Sudbury): Operational wastes reached soil and groundwater at the outlying annex, with PFAS later detected at two former areas of contamination. The site came off the National Priorities List in 2002, and most of the property passed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Assabet River refuge.
Exposure picked up elsewhere counts every bit as much: Agent Orange, Gulf War hazards, burn pit smoke now covered by the PACT Act, the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune and other toxins at military bases across the U.S. If your condition is due to toxic exposure, get in touch with us to explore your options.
Legal Resources and Lawyers Near You
Boston
Boston VA Regional Benefit Office: 15 Sudbury Street, JFK Federal Building, Boston, MA 02203. National benefits line: 800-827-1000
Worcester
City of Worcester Veterans’ Services: City Hall Room 101, 455 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01608. Phone: 508-799-1041
Massachusetts VA Facilities Serving Veterans
Benefits and Service Offices
- Boston VA Regional Benefit Office: 15 Sudbury Street, JFK Federal Building, Boston, MA 02203.
- Executive Office of Veterans Services: One Bowdoin Square, 15 New Chardon Street, Suite 400, Boston, MA 02114. Constituent services: 617-210-5480, weekdays 9am to 5pm. The office oversees Chapter 115 benefits and the state Veterans Homes in Holyoke and Chelsea.
VA Medical Centers
- Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center: 150 South Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02130. Phone: 617-232-9500
- West Roxbury VA Medical Center: 1400 VFW Parkway, West Roxbury, MA 02132. Phone: 617-323-7700
- Brockton VA Medical Center: 940 Belmont Street, Brockton, MA 02301. Phone: 508-583-4500
- Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans’ Hospital: 200 Springs Road, Bedford, MA 01730. Phone: 781-687-2000
- Edward P. Boland VA Medical Center: 421 North Main Street, Leeds, MA 01053. Phone: 413-584-4040
VA Clinics
- Framingham VA Clinic: 61 Lincoln Street, Suite 112, Framingham, MA 01702
- Lowell VA Clinic: 130 Marshall Road, Lowell, MA 01852
- Plymouth VA Clinic: 116 Long Pond Road, Plymouth, MA 02360
- Quincy VA Clinic: 110 West Squantam Street, Quincy, MA 02171
- Worcester VA Clinic: 403 Belmont Street, 1st Floor, Worcester, MA 01604
- Plantation Street VA Clinic: 377 Plantation Street, Biotech Building 4, Worcester, MA 01605
- Springfield VA Clinic: 25 Bond Street, Springfield, MA 01104
- Fitchburg VA Clinic: 881 Main Street, Philip J. Philbin Federal Building, Fitchburg, MA 01420
- Greenfield VA Clinic: 143 Munson Street, Greenfield, MA 01301
- Pittsfield VA Clinic: 78 Center Street, Silvio Conte Building, 2nd Floor, Pittsfield, MA 01201
- Gloucester VA Clinic: 199 Main Street, Gloucester, MA 01930
- Haverhill VA Clinic: 209 Summer Street, Haverhill, MA 01830
- Lynn VA Clinic: 225 Boston Street, Suite 107, Lynn, MA 01904
- Hyannis VA Clinic: 233 Stevens Street, Hyannis, MA 02601
- New Bedford VA Clinic: 175 Elm Street, New Bedford, MA 02740
Vet Centers
- Boston Vet Center: 7 Drydock Avenue, Suite 2070, Boston, MA 02210. Phone: 857-203-6461
- Worcester Vet Center: 255 Park Avenue, Suite 900, Worcester, MA 01609. Phone: 508-753-7902
- Brockton Vet Center: 1 Pearl Street, Suite 2300, Brockton, MA 02301. Phone: 508-580-2730
- Lowell Vet Center: 10 George Street, Lowell, MA 01852. Phone: 978-453-1151
- Cape Cod Vet Center: 474 West Main Street, Hyannis, MA 02601. Phone: 508-778-0124
- New Bedford Vet Center: 73 Huttleston Avenue, Unit 1, Fairhaven, MA 02719. Phone: 508-999-6920
- Springfield Vet Center: 95 Ashley Avenue, Suite A, West Springfield, MA 01089. Phone: 413-737-5167
Housing Assistance and Support for Massachusetts Veterans
Across the state’s Continuums of Care, the 2025 Point-in-Time count put 550 veterans among 28,311 people with no stable place to sleep on one January night. But many more are at risk.
The VA reaches these veterans through the medical centers in Boston, Bedford and Leeds and the clinics around them: HUD-VASH vouchers paired with case management, outreach through Health Care for Homeless Veterans, transitional housing paid for under Grant and Per Diem, plus eviction prevention and rapid rehousing under Supportive Services for Veteran Families.
Our VA disability attorneys prioritize veterans facing homelessness or unemployment due to disability. We know that unpaid compensation the VA should have granted sits behind many cases of financial hardship. Hill & Ponton moves a veteran facing the loss of housing to the front of the queue, charges nothing for the first review, and is paid only if the appeal succeeds.
Meet Our Expert Legal Team
VA disability attorneys standing up for veterans across Massachusetts and every other state.
Let Us Fight For Your Benefits
Need help appealing a VA decision? Contact our VA disability lawyers for a free evaluation.