Question:
Hi- I am a USCG retiree working on getting VA disability compensation. I just received a "statement of the case' from the VA. It addresses only ONE of my issues, even though it says it was a de novo review of ALL the evidence in the record. So my question is: Is a SOC supposed to be comprehensive of all claimed disabilities, or is it normal for a SOC to address only one of them? THANKS!
Jim's Reply:
The SOC can address all items or only a single item that the rater was focused on. Keep in mind that although the SOC should be a comprehensive document that defines what happened to your claim or appeal and why and it should be in a language that can be comprehended by the average citizen. The SOC or even the SSOC rarely achieve those goals and often are just poorly associated paragraphs of strings of phrases copied and pasted from other similar documents. The written documentation that VA provides us is usually boilerplate documents (30 pages plus of rules and regs that nobody reads is common) and often doesn't have any meaning to us. This is one of the reasons I recommend that any denials or questions you have be referred to your own veterans law attorney. You can usually retain an attorney who will monitor all this for you and not pay any expense out of pocket.