A denial is not the end of the road, but the clock starts the day the decision letter is dated. You generally have one year from that date to choose one of three review options, and which one you pick matters more than most veterans realise. A Supplemental Claim on VA Form 20-0995 is for when you have new and relevant evidence VA has not seen. A Higher-Level Review on VA Form 20-0996 is for when they had everything and you believe they got it wrong, and a senior adjudicator looks at the same file. A Board Appeal on VA Form 10182 puts the decision in front of a Veterans Law Judge. You cannot run more than one of these on the same issue at the same time, and you cannot ask for a higher-level review of a higher-level review.

 

The one year deadline is not just about your right to appeal. Under 38 CFR 3.2500, a claim that is continuously pursued, meaning each request is filed within a year of the last decision, keeps the effective date of your original claim. Let the year lapse and a later supplemental claim generally gets an effective date from the day you filed it instead. That difference is measured in months or years of back pay, which is why the date on the letter is the first thing to check.

 

Your denial letter also tells you how to beat it. VA states the reason for each denial, usually in a sentence, and it names which part of the claim failed. A denial that says the examiner found you do not have the condition is a different problem from a denial that says there is no link to service, and each one calls for different evidence. Most veterans never read past the first page.