Claim Navigator

What you'll do

1. See what VA Form 21-526EZ actually asks for, in plain language
2. Review conditions commonly found on a separation exam and mark what applies to you
3. Add anything not on that list
4. Read a short reminder that this isn't medical advice
5. Answer a few questions about evidence and treatment since service
6. Print your organized summary and continue to VA.gov

You don't have to wait on VA to schedule your exam

VA only schedules a Compensation & Pension (C&P) exam when it decides the evidence already on file isn't enough to rate a condition — not automatically for every claim. The big exception: filing at or within about a year of separation makes an exam close to automatic, since there's usually no post-service treatment history yet for VA to rely on instead. Either way, when VA does need one, that wait can take weeks or months. You can bring a Disability Benefits Questionnaire (DBQ), a free condition-specific VA form, to your own doctor before you ever file. A completed private DBQ, submitted with the rest of your evidence, makes it more likely VA has what it needs without ordering its own exam — though it's not a guarantee, especially if something in your file conflicts with it. It can also help your claim qualify as "fully developed," which VA generally decides faster. We'll go into more detail later in the tool, but it's worth knowing from the start.

38 CFR § 3.303

Direct service connection

The most straightforward path: the injury, disease, or event is shown in your service records, plus a current diagnosis, plus a medical opinion connecting the two. One detail that gets missed constantly — you don't need the diagnosis itself to have happened in service. Under 3.303(d), a condition first diagnosed after you got out can still be direct service connection, if the evidence as a whole shows it began in service. "It's not in my STRs" does not automatically mean "no case."

38 CFR §§ 3.307, 3.309

Presumptive service connection

For a specific list of chronic diseases, VA presumes service connection if the condition shows up within a set window after discharge — commonly one year — without you having to prove the link yourself. A second, larger set of presumptions covers specific exposures and duty locations: herbicides like Agent Orange, contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, Gulf War and undiagnosed illnesses, ionizing radiation, and the expanded toxic-exposure list added by the PACT Act. If your case fits one of these lists, this is usually the fastest, lowest-evidence path available.

38 CFR § 3.310

Secondary service connection

A condition VA has already service-connected caused this one, or made it worse. The new condition itself never has to appear anywhere in your service records at all. One nuance that's easy to miss: if the already-connected condition only made this one worse rather than caused it outright, you're compensated for the degree of aggravation, not the whole condition.

38 CFR § 3.306

Aggravation of a pre-existing condition

You had the condition before you joined, it was noted at your entrance exam, and it got permanently worse during service, beyond how it would have naturally progressed on its own. The part most people don't know: once an increase in severity during service is shown, the burden flips — VA has to prove, with clear and unmistakable evidence, that the worsening was natural progression and not service. That burden sits with VA, not with you.

38 U.S.C. § 1151

Disability caused by VA care itself

Not about your time in service at all: if VA's own hospital care, surgery, treatment, or a VA vocational rehabilitation program caused you additional disability, that additional disability is compensated as if it were service-connected. This isn't an obscure exception — it's spelled out explicitly on the notice pages of the 526EZ itself, right alongside everything else in this list.

Also covered by this same form

Individual Unemployability & Temporary Total ratings

Two related situations worth knowing, even though they're not service-connection methods on their own. Individual Unemployability (TDIU) pays at the 100% rate if your service-connected conditions keep you from holding steady, substantially gainful work — even if your combined schedular rating is lower. Temporary Total ratings apply for a period of surgery or hospitalization tied to a service-connected condition. Both ride on the same 526EZ.

Here's the part that's easy to lose sight of while you're reading regulation citations: the payoff for the twenty minutes this page takes is real. Veterans routinely wait months for a decision, and one of the most common, most preventable outcomes when it finally comes back is a denial that boils down to "the evidence you said existed was never actually received." That's not a decision on the merits of your case — it's a paperwork gap. A few minutes spent here, understanding what's actually being asked and getting it right the first time, is what stands between you and months of waiting for exactly that letter.

Section I

Who you are

Your name, Social Security number, VA file number (only if you've filed before), date of birth, mailing address, phone, and email.

Tip: Use your name exactly as it appears on your DD-214. A mismatch is one of the most common reasons a claim gets held up for correction.

Section II

Your service history

Every period of active duty: branch, service dates, and how you were discharged.

Tip: List every stint of service — including active-duty orders during Guard or Reserve time — even if it seems minor. A missing period of service can affect which conditions you're eligible to claim.

Section III

What you're claiming

The actual list of conditions — and for each one, whether it's a new condition, a request to increase an existing rating, or a condition secondary to something already service-connected.

Tip: This is exactly what the next two steps in this tool are for. Everything you check off in the exam review and the additional-conditions section becomes your answer to Section III.

Depending what you claim

Extra forms Section III can trigger

A mental health claim tied to an in-service event can call for a trauma statement (VA Form 21-0781). A claim that a condition keeps you from working can call for an unemployability claim (VA Form 21-8940). Wanting VA to request your private medical records calls for an authorization (VA Form 21-4142).

Tip: We'll walk through the 21-4142 piece later, in the due process step.

A checkbox that matters

Fully Developed Claim (FDC) certification

A checkbox where you tell VA "I'm not sending anything else — decide this claim on what's already here."

Tip: Checking it can speed up your decision, but only once every piece of evidence is actually in. Send more evidence after checking it, and VA pulls your claim out of the fast track.

Near the end of the form

Direct deposit & signature

Bank routing and account number for your compensation payments, then your signature certifying under penalty of law that everything on the form is true. If someone else is signing on your behalf, there's a separate section for that.

Tip: Have a voided check or your bank's routing and account numbers ready. An unsigned form is an incomplete form.

On purpose

What this tool asks for — and what it deliberately doesn't

Notice this tool never asks for your Social Security number, VA file number, date of birth, mailing address, phone, email, or bank routing and account numbers — everything in Section I and the direct-deposit part of the real form. That's not an oversight.

Those are exactly the fields where a mistake costs the most — identity theft, financial fraud, a lost or stolen device with your SSN sitting on it. This tool has no server and saves nothing between visits, which is good for privacy, but it also means there's nowhere safe to put information that sensitive, even temporarily. VA.gov's own account system already handles that part securely, behind your login. So this tool stays in its lane — the part that actually benefits from organizing help before you get there, Section III and the evidence behind it — and leaves your identity and banking details to the system built to hold them safely.

What VA's duty to assist does not cover: your private (non-VA) medical records. VA will request those for you, but only if you tell them where to look and authorize the release. That's what the next section is for.

When does VA actually order an exam?

VA doesn't automatically schedule a Compensation & Pension (C&P) exam for every claim — only when it decides the evidence already on file isn't enough to rate a condition. That's the general rule.

There's a major exception, though: if you're filing at or within about a year of separation — including through the Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD) program — VA routinely schedules exams as a standard part of the process. At that point there usually isn't yet a body of post-service treatment showing your current severity, so VA orders its own exam almost as a matter of course. The longer you wait, and the more evidence you build on your own — private DBQs, ongoing treatment records — the more realistic it becomes to submit a claim VA can decide without ordering an exam at all.

Whichever pathway applies to your condition, VA still needs current medical evidence connecting it to service. Two ways that evidence gets in front of a rater:

• Let VA schedule a C&P exam — close to guaranteed if you're filing near separation, and always possible on any claim VA can't otherwise decide, or
• Bring a completed Disability Benefits Questionnaire (DBQ) to your own doctor first, so you're not starting from zero — and, outside that near-discharge window especially, so VA may not need to schedule one of its own.

It all comes down to whether the rater has enough to decide. A DBQ makes that more likely — it doesn't guarantee it. If your DBQ conflicts with something else in your file (your STRs, an earlier rating, other treatment records), VA can still order its own exam to sort out the discrepancy. A DBQ is your best shot at a clean, consistent record; it's not a way to skip VA's process outright.

DBQs are free, condition-specific VA forms any licensed provider — VA or private — can fill out. If you'd rather not wait for VA to schedule your exam, get a private DBQ (and any other supporting records) done before you file. Submit a genuinely complete packet — every claimed condition backed by a DBQ or equivalent evidence — and you can check the Fully Developed Claim box on the 526EZ, which VA generally decides faster than a standard claim.

What actually determines how long this takes

VA doesn't work your claim start to finish in one pass. Every time it needs something — records you said existed but didn't send, a form, a signature — it sends you a letter and gives you a window to respond, commonly around 30 days. Each one of those cycles is a fresh suspense date. If the evidence still isn't in when it closes, VA either pushes the suspense date another 30 days or decides the claim on whatever's already in the file, which for the missing piece usually means a denial.

Evidence arriving in bits and pieces creates a second problem, separate from the wait: timing. VA's own claim-status tracker says it plainly — submit evidence after your file has already gone to review, and the whole claim goes back to evidence gathering to redo that step. In practice that can mean an exam gets scheduled, or a rating decision gets written, without the examiner or the rater ever seeing the evidence you sent in afterward — not because anyone did anything wrong, but because it simply arrived after that stage had already closed.

This is exactly what the Fully Developed Claim certification on the 526EZ is for, and it's the biggest lever you actually control: hand VA a genuinely complete file the first time, and there's nothing to send a letter about, no suspense date to extend, no risk that a decision gets made before your evidence is in it. Sending things in piecemeal isn't just slower for you — every claim that gets kicked back for missing evidence competes for the same limited reviewer time as everyone else's claim behind it in the queue. The notice-and-response cycle itself isn't VA dragging its feet; it's due process, and VA has to run it every time. The fastest thing you can do, for your claim and for the line behind it, is not give VA a reason to come back and ask twice.

Reference material

If you want to see the actual rules a rater applies:

• 38 CFR Part 4 — the Schedule for Rating Disabilities (the percentage criteria for every condition)
• M21-1 Adjudication Procedures Manual — VA's own public instructions to claims raters
• Evidence VA needs, by claim type

Your ratings

Your dependents

Only changes your payment at a combined rating of 30% or higher.

Rating estimate uses the formula in 38 CFR § 4.25 (no bilateral factor). Compensation estimate uses VA's published 2026 rate tables. Neither is an official VA rating or payment amount, and rates change with the annual COLA — always confirm on VA.gov.

Each additional child under 18 and each additional child 18–23 in school add further amounts on top of these — the calculator above works those in automatically. Spouse Aid & Attendance adds an extra flat amount at 30%+ ratings.