Has the VA denied your disability claim or given you a rating that overlooks what your condition truly costs? The claims system is complicated enough that one missing document or a single thin exhibit can sink a case that should have prevailed.
When the VA gives you less than you are owed, Hill & Ponton can step in, take stock of where your claim stands, and see the appeal through to the finish.
Each of our attorneys is VA-accredited and has spent years working appeals. We know which evidence the VA responds to and how to build a case that flips a denial or an undersized rating into the outcome you have earned.
73,685 New Jersey veterans already receive VA disability, but many more of the 284,578 veterans estimated to be living in the state could be eligible for compensation. If you’re one of them, we are ready to fight on your behalf for every dollar your service warrants.
Our Legal Services for NJ Veterans
- Disability Compensation: We pursue the full monthly benefit your service-connected conditions justify, mental and physical alike, gathering treatment records, service files, and outside medical opinions behind a well-documented demand for everything you are owed.
- Appeals: If the VA rejects a claim or rates it beneath what your condition genuinely calls for, we can run the appeal ourselves, assembling a complete, evidence-driven case that disputes the ruling and goes after the benefits owed to you from the start.
- Rating Increases: Should a condition grow more severe after the VA’s last rating, a higher percentage, and a larger monthly payment, may be warranted. We help you establish that decline and win the bump.
- Survivor Benefits: Should a service-connected condition end a veteran’s life, the family left behind should not have to shoulder the aftermath by themselves; we guide surviving spouses, children, and parents through DIC and survivor claims.
- Special Monthly Compensation: Certain injuries go beyond what the standard schedule accounts for, such as losing a limb, blindness, or a condition serious enough to call for Aid & Attendance. SMC adds payment on top of the usual 100% benefits to account for that added hardship.
- Total Disability Based on Individual Unemployability: When your service-connected conditions rule out steady full-time work, TDIU can pay at the full 100% rate even when your combined rating sits lower. We support the claim with the medical history, employment record, and vocational evidence proving that holding a job is no longer realistic.
What Compensation and Benefits Are Available to You?
Almost every benefit the VA offers, from cash payments to health care, flows from your disability rating. That number is the VA’s measure of how badly your service-connected conditions disrupt your daily life, your ability to work, your self-care, and your overall health.
Ratings climb from 10% to 100% in ten-point steps, and the higher the figure, the larger your tax-free monthly check. The table below shows the current monthly payment for a New Jersey 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
The VA adjusts these figures every year for inflation, and a veteran who supports a spouse, children, or dependent parents receives more.
Federal pay is only part of it. New Jersey backs its disabled veterans with state benefits of its own, reaching their families too: a full property tax exemption for 100% disabled veterans, a $250 yearly property tax deduction, tuition aid, and free state park access.
Work with us to get your benefits
When Should You Hire a VA Disability Lawyer?
Plenty of NJ veterans handle the first claim themselves, which is a great way to begin. The picture shifts, though, the instant the VA denies that claim or returns a rating far beneath your condition, because that is precisely when a lawyer proves their worth.
Appeals run on strict deadlines and procedures that change with little notice, and one missed form can cost you months. With a VA-accredited attorney on your side, someone who already understands the process is at the wheel.
VA disability law is all we do. We gather the medical and service records, secure the convincing expert opinions, construct the appeal, and present it to the VA in clear terms, showing exactly how the disability disrupts your job, your wellbeing, and your daily routine.
Three Ways to Challenge a VA Decision
- Supplemental Claim: Submit evidence the VA has not reviewed yet, a new record, a fresh diagnosis, or a service document that never made it into the file, and this route reopens your claim for a new decision.
- Higher-Level Review: Believe the VA got it wrong on the evidence already in hand? A more senior adjudicator re-examines the same record, often the fastest way to correct a clear error.
- Board of Veterans’ Appeals Review: This option lets you request a direct review, add new evidence, or present your case to a Veterans Law Judge at a hearing. It takes the longest yet examines the claim most closely.
When the VA will not acknowledge everything your service-connected condition takes from you, we are ready to act. A case review is free, you owe nothing up front, and you pay us only if the appeal succeeds. Tell us what happened and let us carry the fight forward from here.
Winning Your VA Disability Appeal
Plenty of veterans get stuck in a cycle of refiling and waiting, unsure how a legitimate claim was ever rejected. Most of the time the answer is that a crucial piece never reached the record, or the VA never connected the condition to military service.
An approval depends on three pieces fitting together: a current diagnosis, an in-service cause, and a nexus tying the two together.
- Current Diagnosis: A licensed medical provider documents that you have the condition today.
- In-Service Event: An injury, illness, traumatic episode, or toxic exposure during your service could reasonably have set the condition in motion or aggravated it.
- Nexus: A medical opinion ties the two together, concluding it is “at least as likely as not” that your military service caused it.
Even when all three are clearly met, a claim can still be turned down if one piece of evidence is thin or absent. The common reasons a claim falls apart:
- A weak or absent medical link tying the condition to military service
- Medical records that are outdated or riddled with gaps
- A filing or evidence deadline that slipped past
- The VA misreading a service file or the treatment history
Appeals for VA disability are the whole of our work. Our accredited attorneys work alongside trusted medical experts to build strong nexus opinions and to keep each appeal complete, accurate, and filed well ahead of the deadline.
Get a free case evaluation
Winning Toxic Exposure Claims
New Jersey has hosted military installations for generations, from Army arsenals and Navy weapons stations to a sprawling joint base, and several carry a documented record of contamination.
If you served at or near one of these sites (or any other contaminated military base in the state or elsewhere) and later came down with a related illness, you could be eligible for benefits.
- Picatinny Arsenal (Rockaway Township, Morris County): Well over a century of weapons research and production left this EPA Superfund site tainted with TCE and other solvents, explosives residue, PCBs, and lead throughout the soil and groundwater.
- Naval Weapons Station Earle (Colts Neck, Monmouth County): Ordnance work and years of firefighting foam left lead, chromium, solvents, PCBs, and the PFAS chemicals PFOS and PFOA in the soil and water at this Navy base.
- Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (Burlington and Ocean counties): Heavy use of firefighting foam pushed PFOS and PFOA into the groundwater on and around this joint Air Force, Army, and Navy installation, reaching private wells nearby.
- Diamond Alkali / Lower Passaic River (Newark): This riverfront chemical works once produced the 2,4,5-T used to make Agent Orange, and the dioxin it left behind turned the Passaic into a federal Superfund cleanup. Service members exposed to Agent Orange during their time in uniform may be eligible for benefits covering its many presumptive conditions.
If a toxic exposure caused or aggravated your condition, an old denial does not shut the door; a route to compensation could still be open. Reach out for a free review to see how we can help.
Legal Resources and Lawyers Near You
Newark
Newark VA Regional Benefit Office: 20 Washington Place, Newark, NJ 07102. Phone: 1-800-827-1000
Toms River
Ocean County Veterans Service Bureau: 1005 Hooper Avenue, Toms River, NJ 08754. Phone: 732-929-2096
New Jersey VA Facilities Serving Veterans
Veterans Service Offices
- New Jersey Department of Veterans Affairs (NJDVA): Veterans Benefits Hotline 888-865-8387 (888-8NJ-VETS). NJDVA has accredited Veterans Service Officers in all 21 counties to help veterans file and appeal claims at no cost.
- Newark VA Regional Benefit Office: 20 Washington Place, Newark, NJ 07102. Phone: 1-800-827-1000
VA Medical Centers
- East Orange VA Medical Center: 385 Tremont Avenue, East Orange, NJ 07018. Phone: 973-676-1000
- Lyons VA Medical Center: 151 Knollcroft Road, Lyons, NJ 07939. Phone: 908-647-0180
VA Clinics / CBOC
- Hamilton VA Clinic: 3635 Quakerbridge Road, Hamilton, NJ 08619
- Leonard G. “Bud” Lomell VA Clinic (Toms River): 1055 Hooper Avenue, Toms River, NJ 08753
- Piscataway VA Clinic: 14 Wills Way, Building 5, Piscataway, NJ 08854
- Jersey City VA Clinic: 115 Christopher Columbus Drive, Suite 201, Jersey City, NJ 07302
- Paterson VA Clinic: 11 Getty Avenue, DePaul Center, Building 275, Paterson, NJ 07503
- Morristown VA Clinic: 540 West Hanover Avenue, Morristown, NJ 07960
- Tinton Falls VA Clinic: 55 North Gilbert Street, The Atrium, Building 4, 1st Floor, Suite 4101, Tinton Falls, NJ 07701
Vet Centers
- Bloomfield Vet Center: 2 Broad Street, Suite 703, Bloomfield, NJ 07003. Phone: 973-748-0980
- Lakewood Vet Center: 1255 Route 70 West, Unit 22N, Lakewood, NJ 08701. Phone: 732-905-0327
- Secaucus Vet Center: 110A Meadowlands Parkway, Suite 102, Secaucus, NJ 07094. Phone: 201-223-7787
- South Jersey Vet Center: 2900 Fire Road, Suite 101, Egg Harbor Township, NJ 08234. Phone: 609-487-8387
Housing Assistance and Support for New Jersey Veterans
Veteran homelessness has not spared New Jersey. On a single night in January 2025, New Jersey’s Point-in-Time count recorded 538 veterans with no stable place to live. VA and government programs are working to bring that total down.
The VA’s homeless programs steer veterans toward housing, both transitional and permanent, along with medical care, mental health treatment, and case management. Coordinated through the East Orange and Lyons medical centers and the statewide clinics, they include HUD-VASH vouchers, Health Care for Homeless Veterans, and Grant and Per Diem transitional housing.
Where a wrongful denial or a depressed rating is part of why a veteran’s home is slipping away, winning back the right benefits can change the outcome. At Hill & Ponton, veterans on the edge of losing housing or work come first, and you owe no fee unless we win. Contact us for a free, no-obligation look at where you stand.
Meet Our Expert Legal Team
VA Disability Attorneys and professionals championing veterans across New Jersey and nationwide.
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