LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – With a new partnership between the National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP) and the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency (MVAA), Michigan veterans and
their families will now be able to access free legal representation when appealing their claims in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Data from the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics puts the Michigan veteran population at 554,281 in FY 2021 with the highest number of vets in Wayne County with 81,454, followed by Oakland County (53,284), Macomb County (44,043), Kent County (32,128) and Genesee (23,941).

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Zaneta Adams, Director of the MVAA says about the partnership, “Michigan veterans will now have access to an unprecedented level of representation by a national legal team who will defend their rights at the highest legal levels, to ensure fairness in the disability benefit arena.”

NVLSP, the legal services program, is a nonprofit organization that works to make sure America’s 22 million veterans and active-duty personnel get the benefits that they are entitled to after getting a disability as a result of serving their country.

When a veteran has their claim denied, they can appeal the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) where they are provided an impartial judicial forum for review of administrative decisions that were made by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) that are adverse to the veteran’s claim of entitlement to benefits for
service-connected disabilities, survivor benefits and other benefits like education payments and waiver of indebtedness.

The NVLSP will provide free legal representation after reviewing the denial from the BVA and determining if there are grounds for an appeal to the CAVC.

The reasons that veterans have their claims denied are varied and include things like inadequate information in the claim, a missed deadline, a disability ruled as non-service related, VA doesn’t consider symptoms to be severe enough, evidence provided was insufficient or the VA ruled the injury is a pre-existing condition.