| Matthew Hill: | Hello and welcome to another Hill and Ponton Veteran’s video blog. I’m Matthew Hill. |
| Carol Ponton: | I’m Carol Ponton. |
| Matthew Hill: | Today, we want to talk to you about paperwork. Paperwork can be so boring and and if you’ve been filing treatment claims at VA you also know it can also be important even though it is tedious. |
| We want to talk about two specific pieces of paperwork that one should file when they are still battling for service connection. What I mean by that is, they have not been granted VA benefits at all, but they are battling for it to get service connected and to get that compensation. | |
| Carol Ponton: | There are two that we find that veterans don’t get around to filing and this sometimes looses them benefits or really delays them getting benefits. One is it’s a 686-C. That’s the form. It’s for dependent benefits. |
| If you have a rating that’s 30 percent or more, than your dependents are entitled- you’re entitled to additional income for them. | |
| You are going to need a marriage certificate, a birth certificate. These are things that you need to go ahead and file the form and get it in. Okay. | |
| A lot of times, I’ve found veterans that didn’t really realize that. They thought they were getting all the benefits they were entitled to and 20 years later, they had never gotten the dependent benefits because they just assumed it was part of it. | |
| If you don’t file the 686-C, you’re not going to be getting them. | |
| Another thing is, you’ve battled for years to get these benefits, these ratings. Maybe for your back, for your mental condition and then they give you your benefit and you have to wait forever to get the benefits for the dependents. If you already have those forms in there, it comes out right away. | |
| Matthew Hill: | The difficult thing here is that if you’re working sometimes VSO’s or other individuals or even the VA, they will look at you and say, “Why are you filing this dependency form when you aren’t even getting benefits at all.” They look at you like you’re crazy saying, “This is putting the cart before the horse.” |
| It could be in a way, but what you’re doing is putting all your paperwork in order. When you get service connected, it should be streamlined. It should be a one stop deal and they give you the right benefits right away verses as Carol said, it’s… | |
| Carol Ponton: | As you know, it’s taken years and years and years for them to get around to awarding the benefits. It’s taking time after that to pay the benefits. Then, if they have to go back and collect all this information about your dependents, you’re even farther behind in getting paid. |
| The other form I wanted talk about is the 8940. If a person is not working, if they are unemployed due to a what they think should be a service connected problem, they should file an 8940. | |
| An 8940 is a form that says I’m unemployable. Why should you file it? There are million reasons. First of all, if the VA finds that a person has one rating of 60 percent or more or combined ratings of 70 percent or more and the person is not working, they should consider whether they are not entitled to 100 percent under unemployability. You don’t have that form in there, they’re not going to look at it. | |
| Matthew Hill: | This goes back to what we were talking about. She’s not talking about when you already have the 70 percent or 90 percent, hopefully who’s ever helping you at that point makes it- shows that you’re not working, that you have that in writing, is putting that in right away. |
| She’s talking about, again, when you apply for benefits and lets say you apply for heart benefits, and you’re not working due to your heart. Even though you’re not receiving any benefits yet, even though they denied you, she’s saying…. | |
| Carol Ponton: | The service connection. File the unemployability. They will say, “Well, I’m not going to process that.” That’s fine. Because what happens so often is, we find that people get the 60 percent rating or the combined 70 percent rating and then they file their unemployability and the VA grants them unemployability as of the date they filed the form. |
| There may…. | |
| Matthew Hill: | They say, “Oh, it’s a new claim.” |
| Carol Ponton: | This is a new claim. There are all these years before that they are not looking at. You want to get the proof of your claim, the quest for your claim in right away so that the VA goes, “What are you asking for?” |
| Okay? | |
| Matthew Hill: | Remember, it doesn’t matter if you file a claim for increase or filing a claim for service connection, you want both those forms in even before they get decided. |
| Carol Ponton: | The numbers are, and you can just Google, 686-C and 8940. |
| Matthew Hill: | Have a good day. |
| Carol Ponton: | Bye. |
Video Blog – Important VA Paperwork
