The Law Q&A | Attention! A 2026 field guide to VA disability claims

Readers, TEN-hut! As another Veterans Day rolls around, let us take a roll call of the 2026 law, old and new, good and bad, for veterans filing service-related disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) so as to get compensation for those disabilities. We’ll start with the existing law. The VA determines service-connected disability claims. And the amount of a disability proven is on a percentage rating system — from 0 to 100 percent awarded in increments of 10 percent. The percentage correlates with the amount of monthly compensation a veteran would get. A 0 percent rating, while not getting the vet monetary compensation, can still qualify a veteran for other benefits such as VA healthcare for the service-connected condition. Higher percentages of disability can get more substantial financial support along with more benefits, including educational assistance and home loan guarantees. So, what does a vet have to prove to establish a service-related disability? The VA generally requires three things be shown: a current diagnosis of a disease or injury; evidence of an in-service event (disease or injury); and a medical link between the current diagnosis and the in-service event. The medical link will require a doctor to explicitly state that, in their professional opinion, the vet’s current condition is “at least as likely as not” due to your military service. That opinion needs to be well-reasoned and supported by medical science. Statements from former commanders, service mates and family can also help. That was old. Now what’s new? The VA claims process has been significantly modernized in 2026. While the core requirements of proof remain, the method of submitting and tracking claims is more efficient. The va.gov portal is now the primary hub for submitting new claims, uploading evidence, and checking the status of existing claims. Prior times allowed only pony-express postal mail and faxes as the means to upload documentary evidence to the VA. The VA now says that 80 percent of new claims submitted through the VA.gov Disability Claims Portal are processed within 120 days, which is way faster over previous years. Despite the digital convenience, the process can still be a real challenge. Many veterans work with a Veterans Service Organization (VSO) or an accredited claims agent. Organizations like the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) or the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) offer free assistance, helping veterans gather evidence, fill out forms, and track their claims. What’s also new? One of the things where Congress was making it easier for vets to prove claims is called “presumptive conditions.” If a vet served in specific locations or during particular timeframes and later developed certain illnesses, the VA “presumes” that these conditions are service-related. This means the veteran doesn’t have to prove a direct link between their service and their illness. Effective Jan. 1, 2026, the VA added hypertension and Parkinson’s disease to the list of presumptive conditions for Vietnam-era veterans who served in specific areas. Other new presumptive conditions are exposure to contaminants at Camp Lejeune for those who served in the Persian Gulf War, as well as veterans exposed to radiation. One aspect helping vets in this proving-the-claim obstacle course is the “benefit of the doubt” rule. If the VA sees equal evidence in favor of the claim and against the claim, it is supposed to rule in favor. And if a vet lost, they can appeal. Now the bad news: Until 2025, the Veterans Court of Appeals could issue its own judgment on the evidence to overturn an initial claim denial by the VA. But that long-standing practice of the appeals court making its own determination of the evidence was shot down in a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling in 2025. The Supreme Court interpreted the law to actually require the Veterans Court of Appeals to not make its own factual determination based on the evidence submitted to VA review servicers, but only to decide if the VA’s claim denial was clearly wrong. This “clear error” is a really high bar to hurdle. Critics of that Supreme Court ruling say this will make overturning a VA denial way more unlikely to succeed. If that ruling is to be changed to get the old appeals court procedure flying again, Congress would have to step forward to amend its law on the Veterans Appellate Court to specifically give it the ability to independently make its own assessment of the evidence to see if a claim was proven. So, there’s the current TO&E of VA disability law. Readers, DIS-missed!