Duty to Assist under the Veterans Claims Assistance Act
An important feature that most Veterans probably wouldn’t believe is that the VA is actually supposed to assist you whileapplying for VA compensation. This is of course in theory. The applicable rule, the Veterans Claims Assistance Act, also known as the “duty to assist” so that the VA will assistVeterans develop their claims in a variety of ways described here. Assist with Evidence The duty to assist requires VA to fully develop the claim for increase andmake “reasonable efforts” to assist the veteran in locating the evidence. This includes evidence from private medical providers. If the VA is unable to procure this evidence, they must let the veteran know. There is a bit of a heightened duty if the records are from a different federal agency (including service treatment records),they must get the records unless for some reason they don’t exist, or further efforts would be pointless. The duty to