2019 brought significant changes to VA laws and policies. Following is a recap of two of these changes.

One of the most significant changes was related to Blue Water Navy Veterans who served on or near the coast of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The VA has now added certain of these veterans to the group who might be entitled to presumption of service connection for conditions related to Agent Orange exposure. This extension of presumption is a result of Public Law 116-23, the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019, which was signed into law on June 25, 2019 and which took effect January 1, 2020. In order to qualify, the veteran must have served aboard a vessel operating not more than twelve nautical miles seaward from the demarcation line of the waters of Vietnam and Cambodia as defined in the new law and have a condition that is in statute as presumptive to exposure to Agent Orange.

A second major change was related to the appeals process. As of February 19, 2019, there are now two different appeals processes; i.e. Legacy and Modernization.

Although Legacy appeals will eventually be phased out with the replacement of those under the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act, they still exist at this time. Legacy appeals are those where an adverse decision was issued prior to February 19, 2019. The Legacy claimant has a choice of continuing the appeal under the previous appeals process by submitting a formal notice of disagreement and presenting his/her case before the Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA) or opting into the Modernization appeals process after a Statement of the Case (SOC) or Supplemental Statement of the Case (SSOC) has been received. Since there are still many pre-February 19, 2019 appeals outstanding, it will take a considerably amount of time before the Legacy process is no longer available.

Appeals under the Modernization process is related to decisions issued on or after February 19, 2019. This process allows the claimant to choose one of three options: to file a Supplemental Claim, to request a Higher-Level Review, or to go straight to the BVA. These same options are also available to those Legacy claimants who have opted in after receiving a SOC or SSOC.

A Supplemental Claim allows the claimant to submit new and relevant evidence, while a request for a Higher-Level Review requests that the original claim be reviewed de novo by a more experience adjudicator without submission of any new evidence and without a hearing.

The third option allows the claimant to present new evidence and to request a hearing before the BVA. Both the Supplemental and Higher-Level Review will allow the claimant to switch back and forth, provided that he/she does so within one year of the last VA decision. All of these lanes will preserve the original date of entitlement, provided that they are pursued within one year of the VA’s last decision.

In addition to the above changes, there have been three BVA decisions related to a denial of a non-service connected pension claim based on the transfer of assets prior to October 18, 2018. In all three of these cases, the BVA overturned the original office of jurisdiction and sided with the claimant based on the fact that transfers prior to October 18, 2018 are not subject to penalty under the current pension look-back period. These three BVA cases are:

Citation Nr: 19122257 – Date: 03/25/19 – Docket NO: 17-58 532

Citation Nr: 19112706 – Date: 02/21/19 – Docket NO: 18-38 292

Citation Nr: 19109669 – Date: 02/07/19 – Docket NO: 17-43 195