A condition from your service can stay with you long after you come home to the islands. It follows you through the workday, fills your calendar with appointments, and keeps you up at night. A VA letter that turns the claim down, or rates it well under what you deal with each day, can feel as if your service went unrecognized.
Hill & Ponton’s VA-accredited attorneys have worked for veterans and their families since 1986, and the practice is devoted entirely to disability law. Our record is a 96% win rate on the cases we take, and we’ll only collect a fee when the VA pays you. If we don’t win your appeal, you owe us nothing.
Our Legal Services for Virgin Islands Veterans
- Disability Compensation: We read your rating decision against your records to catch unrated conditions, percentages lower than the evidence supports, and effective dates that cut off months of payment, then pursue the full award and any back pay owed.
- VA Disability Appeals: We work out the exact findings the VA relied on to deny or limit your claim, collect the proof that contradicts them, and file the appeal in the review lane best suited to those findings.
- Rating Increases: If a service-connected condition has grown worse since the VA rated it, we put together recent treatment notes and exam results and seek the higher rating you now qualify for.
- Special Monthly Compensation: Amputation or loss of use of an arm or leg, blindness, being housebound, or relying on daily help from another person can support Special Monthly Compensation. We press the VA to award every level your disabilities qualify for.
- Individual Unemployability: If your service-connected disabilities make substantially gainful work impossible, TDIU pays at the 100% rate. We build the medical and vocational record your claim requires.
- DIC and Survivor Benefits: Families of veterans whose deaths were tied to service, including spouses, children, and dependent parents, may be owed DIC or other survivor benefits.
What Compensation and Benefits Are Available to You?
VA disability ratings move in 10-point steps from 0% to 100%, and the percentage you’re assigned determines the tax-free compensation deposited each month.
For veterans with several rated conditions, the VA combines the percentages on its combined ratings table, so the result is always lower than a straight sum. The VA disability calculator works out the combined figure for you.
The VA currently pays a veteran without 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 rates are adjusted every year for the cost of living, and there are added amounts for each dependent spouse, child, or parent.
The territory adds its own state benefits specific to the Virgin Islands, including a real property tax exemption for veterans rated permanently and totally disabled, a home loan program, tuition waived at the University of the Virgin Islands, free veteran license plates, and more.
Work with us to get your benefits
When Should You Hire a VA Disability Lawyer?
In May 2023, the VA held a health and benefits fair at the National Guard Armory in Kingshill, St. Croix, where island veterans could get VA claims assistance and toxic exposure screenings and enroll in VA health care. Help like that gets claims started. But when the VA’s decision comes back as a denial or a rating that misses what your condition costs you, it may be time to bring in a disability lawyer.
Your review deadline starts with that decision, and gathering records from the island clinics, San Juan, and private doctors takes time, so an early start protects your options. Once we take your case, Hill & Ponton attorneys can:
- Request your complete claims file and compare it with the VA’s stated reasons.
- Identify evidence the VA overlooked and rules it misapplied.
- Choose the review lane that fits what went wrong.
- Keep every filing on schedule so your effective date is protected.
- Argue your case to a Veterans Law Judge if it reaches the Board.
Winning VA Appeals in the Virgin Islands
Before the VA will service-connect a disability, three elements have to appear in your file:
- Diagnosis: A current diagnosis from the Saint Croix or Saint Thomas VA clinic, the San Juan VA Medical Center, or a private provider.
- In-service event: Service treatment records, personnel records, or a buddy statement showing the injury, illness, or exposure during your service.
- Nexus: A medical opinion explaining why your condition is at least as likely as not related to that event.
Claims often come up short for reasons like these:
- The only nexus opinion in the file is a brief negative one from a VA examiner.
- Treatment you received from a private doctor on the islands never reached the VA.
- Your service records don’t mention the event, and no fellow service member has described it in writing.
- The exam didn’t reflect how your condition affects you on bad days.
Every one of these problems has an evidentiary fix, from records requests and lay statements to a new medical opinion that responds to the VA’s stated reason.
Get a free case evaluation
Toxic Exposure Claims
The VA now covers more veterans harmed by Agent Orange, burn pit fumes and other dangerous chemicals, and it screens everyone enrolled in its health care for toxic exposure. The Army Corps of Engineers tracks several former defense sites in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including a World War II airfield on Saint Croix and a former chemical munitions test area on Water Island.
- Benedict Field (St. Croix): The Army Air Force’s Caribbean Air Command used this airfield near Christiansted from 1940 to 1947, and it was home to fighter and heavy bomber squadrons. Its practice bomb target, small arms ranges, ammunition storage, and underground fuel tanks put munitions and fuel on the site, and the Army Corps of Engineers manages the former bombing target as a munitions response site under land use controls. If your duties took you to the ranges, the bomb target, or the ammunition and fuel areas, you worked closest to those hazards.
- Buck Island Demolition Training Facility (St. Thomas): The Navy trained Atlantic Fleet amphibious units in underwater demolition here until 1967. The Army Corps of Engineers listed the island for an ordnance and explosive waste cleanup, which it closed in 2009.
- Marine Corps Air Facility (Contant, St. Thomas): A fully operational Marine Corps air facility from 1936 to 1942, now occupied by the University of the Virgin Islands and Cyril E. King Airport; a building demolition and debris removal project there was completed in 1993.
- Former Fort Segarra (Water Island): The government acquired Water Island in 1944 for coastal defense, and from 1948 to 1950 the Army Chemical Corps used parts of it to test and store chemical munitions. A munitions removal action was completed in 2009.
Illnesses connected to military service can appear decades after the fact, which makes the connection harder to prove to the VA. If your claim was denied, our lawyers can assist you with the appeal to obtain the benefits your service earned.
VA Facilities in the U.S. Virgin Islands
St. Croix
- USVI Office of Veterans Affairs, St. Croix: Open 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Phone: 340-773-8387.
- Saint Croix VA Clinic: Weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. 10553 Kingshill, The Village Mall, Suite 113, St. Croix, VI 00850. Phone: 340-778-5553.
- St. Croix Vet Center Outstation: A satellite of the U.S. Virgin Islands Vet Center, weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Village Mall, Plot 113, Kingshill, VI 00850. Phone: 340-778-5553.
St. Thomas and St. John
- USVI Office of Veterans Affairs, St. Thomas: Phone: 340-774-8387.
- Saint Thomas VA Clinic: 50 Estates Thomas, Suite 101, St. Thomas, VI 00802. Phone: 340-774-6674.
- U.S. Virgin Islands Vet Center: 9164 Estate Thomas, Suite 1, St. Thomas, VI 00802. Phone: 340-774-5384.
Puerto Rico
- San Juan VA Regional Benefit Office: Weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. 50 Carr 165, Guaynabo, PR 00968. Phone: 800-827-1000.
- San Juan VA Medical Center: The VA Caribbean medical center, open 24 hours a day. 10 Calle Casia, San Juan, PR 00921. Phone: 787-641-7582.
Housing Support for Homeless and At-Risk Veterans
Through VA Caribbean homeless veteran care, a homeless services care coordinator can help Virgin Islands veterans with finding transitional or permanent housing, meals and emergency shelter, job and life-skills training, money to keep you from losing housing, re-entry support after jail, medical and dental treatment, and care for depression and addiction.
HUD’s 2025 Point-in-Time count for the Virgin Islands recorded 16 homeless veterans across the territory, but that figure doesn’t include veterans who may be staying with family or falling behind on rent.
If a denied claim or a rating that falls short is putting your housing at risk, Hill & Ponton gives your appeal priority. Let us know about your situation when you reach out; you will not pay an attorney fee until after your appeal is won.
Meet Our Expert Legal Team
VA attorneys and case professionals representing veterans on St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John, and anywhere in the Virgin Islands and the U.S.
Let Us Fight For Your Benefits
Need help appealing a VA decision? Contact our VA-accredited disability lawyers for a free evaluation of your claim.