If you are unfamiliar with them, VA disability claims can be confusing. Determining your payment can feel like trying to do calculus if no one has explained where the numbers come from.
You need to ask yourself some questions: what is your disability type? What percentage of disability do you have? What would your payment be for a full disability? What about dependents?
Changing the answers to any of these factors will change your payment. A VA disability calculator from Berry Law will give you the formulas you need to solve these questions.
What Is VA Disability?
If you are someone who could justifiably seek VA disability, you probably already know that VA disability payments are designed to provide support for people who were injured due to their service in the military.
What you might not know is that you can get disability payments for issues other than just direct physical injuries. You may also receive disability due to illnesses caused by chemicals or pathogens you were exposed to in service. You may also earn disability from mental injuries like PTSD.
YOu might enter the service with injuries or illnesses that could become worse later in life. These would be considered pre-existing disabilities and would be excluded from your disability determination unless it can be demonstrated that your service made the issue worse.
Symptoms of your disability might arise years after your service, or they could become substantially worse over time. This type of disability would be caught by your reexaminations or might require you to request a reexamination.
No matter what your disability type, there are quite a few factors that determine your VA disability payout. You have to determine whether you have any dependents, if you are married or not, if your parents are your dependents, and your total percentage disability (which might also require a calculator).
The VA provides a base table each year that defines what the current disability payment is in the eventuality of one hundred percent disability. The determining factors will be calculated into this number to determine the actual payouts.
While anything less than one hundred percent disability will lead to a reduction of your payment, certain types of injury like the catastrophic loss of a hand can add an additional benefit to your payment.
The most complicated part of completing a VA disability determination is that multiple injuries stack, but they don’t add. Each additional percentage injury is a percentage of the remaining total ability, not of the overall.
To clarify this complicated system, here is an example: Let’s say you have a forty percent injury to your left hand, twenty-five percent to your right arm, and a 30 percent injury to your left leg. You would start with your largest injury, leaving 60% ability. Then the second largest, which is thirty percent of the remaining 60%, or 18% of the total. Taking that from the 60% leaves 42%. Now take 25% of that, which is then rounded up, leaving 31% of the overall total as your final determination.
Anyone would agree that this is a crazy system that is easily mistaken. A VA disability calculator lets you plug in all of the numbers and factors and get a complete result. This gives you a number that you can compare to your offer from the VA, so you know if you need to request an appeal. If you are unsure what is best, seek help from a VA disability attorney who can provide advice.
In summary, a VA disability calculator is a tool that will help you determine your payment and give you a baseline in discussions with the VA.
