The Federal Circuit's ruling in Hamill v. Collins changed one thing that sounds technical and turns out to be worth real money: if the VA decided your claim under the modern system and never explicitly ruled on an issue your record raised, that issue was not denied. It is still pending. I covered what the court held in a companion piece on the end of the implicit denial doctrine. This is the practical follow-up, a way to check your own file for an issue the VA left unanswered, because the people who benefit from this ruling are the ones who go looking.

A note before the steps. This is information, not legal advice, and the strongest version of this argument depends on facts only your full claims file shows. Use this to figure out whether you have something worth raising, then take it to an accredited representative.

Step 1: Gather Every Decision Since February 19, 2019

Hamill applies to claims decided under the Appeals Modernization Act, which means decision notices issued on or after February 19, 2019. Legacy decisions older than that are governed by the old rules and are outside this ruling.

Pull together every VA decision letter and rating decision you have received since that date. If you do not have them all, request your claims file (your C-file) so you can see the full set of decisions and the evidence the VA was sitting on when it made them. The decision notice is the document that matters here, because the court's test is about what that notice actually says.

Step 2: Read the List of Issues the VA Says It Decided

Every AMA decision is supposed to identify the issues it adjudicated. That requirement comes from 38 U.S.C. 5104(b), the same statute the Federal Circuit relied on in Hamill. Find that list in each decision. Write down, for each decision, exactly which issues the VA names.

This is the heart of the check. The court drew a bright line: if an issue is not on that list, the VA did not decide it. You are not arguing about whether a denial was correct. You are identifying issues the VA never addressed at all.

Step 3: Compare the List Against What Your Record Raised

Now put the VA's list next to what your evidence actually put in front of the agency. An issue counts as raised even if you never filed a separate form for it, as long as the record reasonably brought it up. Look for these gaps in particular:

  • Total disability based on individual unemployability, or TDIU. This is the big one. If your file showed you could not keep or hold a job because of service-connected conditions, through exam findings, treatment notes, an employer statement, or your own statements about losing work, the question of unemployability was raised. The VA frequently rates the underlying conditions and never squarely decides TDIU. After Hamill, that silence is an unaddressed issue, not a denial.
  • A secondary condition your evidence connected to a service-connected one, that the decision never mentions.
  • A condition you clearly claimed that got dropped from the decision without a word.

If you find an issue your record raised and the decision simply does not address, that is the pattern Hamill is about.

Step 4: Understand Why the Effective Date Is the Prize

Here is why this is worth the effort. When an issue has been pending since the VA first should have decided it, a later grant carries an effective date back to when the issue arose, not the date the VA finally rules.

Work a TDIU example. Suppose unemployability was raised by your record in 2019, the VA never decided it, and you establish it now in 2026. If TDIU is granted with a 2019 effective date, that is years of benefits paid at the 100 percent rate rather than starting from today. The exact figure depends on your dependents and the rate in each year, but the structure is what to understand: an old pending date is what turns a grant into a retroactive award.

I will say again what I said in the companion piece. This is a door, not a check. You still have to prove the issue on the merits. What the ruling gives you is the argument that the door never closed.

Step 5: Raise It the Right Way

Once you have identified an unaddressed issue, the move is not to file a brand-new claim that starts a brand-new effective date. That can throw away the very back pay you are trying to protect. The better framing is that the issue is still pending and the VA needs to adjudicate it.

This is the point to bring in an accredited Veterans Service Officer or a VA-accredited attorney. The AMA gives you review lanes with strict deadlines, and which lane fits depends on what your decisions say and how long ago they were issued. A representative can read the full file, confirm the issue was genuinely raised and genuinely unaddressed, and frame the request so your original effective date stays intact. Many accredited attorneys take this kind of case on contingency tied to past-due benefits, so a review usually costs nothing up front.

A Quick Self-Check

You may have something worth raising if all of these are true:

  • You have a VA decision dated on or after February 19, 2019.
  • Your record raised an issue, especially unemployability or TDIU, through evidence the VA had.
  • That issue is not on the list of issues the decision says it adjudicated.

If that describes your file, do not treat the old decision as the final word. Under Hamill v. Collins, the issue the VA skipped is still yours to pursue, with the clock still set to when it began.