Effective Date

Question:

I applied for disability in April 2021. It was approved and I received 100% in July 2021. I want to know if I’m entitled to payments when the cancer was finally confirmed - approx. 2 years earlier. I also have 3 Purple Hearts, nothing major, which why I didn’t  apply earlier.

 

Jim's Reply:

The date that a claim begins payments is known as the effective date of the claim. If you file on January of 2020 and your claim is awarded in July of 2021, your effective date is the date that you filed, January 2020.
 

To establish the effective date you must file a claim. There are rare circumstances that an earlier effective date may be filed back to the dates of a diagnosis but that's an unusual event often as a result of a clear and unmistakable error on the part of VA when processing a claim.
 

In the end, if you didn't file a claim back then, I don't see any way to claim retroactive payments.