Evidence and documents
Every document proves something. Most prove less than people think.
A claim turns on whether specific evidence elements are present, not on how many pages you send. Here is what each kind of record actually establishes, and where each one falls short.
Document families
What we read, and what each one is good for
Everything in your eFolder is read, plus anything you upload. Each document is classified by what it contains rather than by its filename, because old records are routinely misfiled.
Service treatment records
STRsSick call notes, enlistment and separation exams, periodic health assessments, immunization records, dental. These carry the most weight for service connection because they are contemporaneous. They are also the records most likely to be a degraded scan of a carbon copy.
- Proves
- That something happened during service, and when.
- Does not
- That the condition continued, or that it is disabling today.
Personnel and service records
OMPF, DD-214Discharge documents, assignment and deployment history, awards and decorations, occupational specialty. These establish exposure theories, combat presumptions and location-based presumptive pathways that a purely medical record cannot.
- Proves
- Where you served, when, in what role, and what you were exposed to.
- Does not
- Anything medical. A DD-214 is service evidence, not a diagnosis.
VA treatment records
VAMCEverything from your VA facility: progress notes, specialty consults, medication history, imaging and lab results. Usually the richest source of current-severity evidence, and usually already in your eFolder.
- Proves
- Current diagnosis, ongoing treatment, and severity over time.
- Does not
- That the condition began in service.
Private medical records
Non-VAYour own doctor, a specialist, a sleep clinic, an urgent care visit. Frequently the location of the one diagnostic study a claim turns on, and frequently the records nobody has requested.
- Proves
- Diagnosis and treatment outside the VA system.
- Does not
- Nothing automatically. VA has to actually receive them.
Disability Benefits Questionnaires
DBQsA structured form completed by a clinician that maps findings onto the criteria a rater uses. A complete DBQ can answer questions that a page of narrative notes leaves open.
- Proves
- Severity measured against the rating criteria directly.
- Does not
- Service connection, on its own.
Buddy and lay statements
21-10210, 21-4138Statements from you, a spouse, or someone who served with you. Often the only evidence of symptoms that were never taken to sick call, which is most of them.
- Proves
- What people observed, including things records never captured.
- Does not
- A medical diagnosis. A lay witness can describe symptoms, not name a condition.
Prior decisions and rating letters
DecisionsOld decision letters and rating code sheets show exactly which element a previous claim failed on. That is the single most actionable document in a file for anyone considering a supplemental claim.
- Proves
- What VA already concluded and on what basis.
- Does not
- That the conclusion is still correct.
Imaging, labs and studies
ObjectiveSleep studies, audiograms, imaging, pulmonary function tests, blood work. For many conditions a specific study is a hard requirement, and nothing else substitutes for it.
- Proves
- Objective findings a rater can rely on without interpretation.
- Does not
- Impact on your daily life or your work.
Contentions
Each condition is decided on its own evidence
A contention is the specific condition you are claiming. Every contention is evaluated separately, against its own list of required elements, by its own diagnostic code.
This is why filing eight vaguely described contentions usually produces a worse result than filing two well-evidenced ones. Volume does not help. A contention with a missing required element does not get partial credit from the strength of the one next to it.
Claim Assistant scores each contention independently, so you can see which ones are ready now and which ones are costing you by being included.
How a contention is scored
- The required evidence elements for that condition are pulled from the rating criteria.
- Findings from your documents are matched against each element.
- Findings are split by whether they date from service or after it.
- Anything still missing becomes a ranked gap with a concrete action.
Buddy and lay statements
The evidence that exists nowhere else
Most symptoms never made it to sick call. Nobody went to medical for snoring. A lay statement is often the only record that the problem started in service at all.
Describe what you saw, not what it was
“He stopped breathing in his sleep and woke up gasping, most nights, starting in 2011” is powerful. “He had sleep apnea in 2011” is a diagnosis a lay witness cannot give, and it weakens the statement.
Anchor it in time and place
A unit, a deployment, a barracks, a year. Specificity is what separates a statement a rater can use from one they cannot weigh.
Say how you know
Shared a room, served in the same section, married since before separation. The relationship is what establishes the witness had the opportunity to observe.
Continuity is the point
Symptoms that started in service and never stopped is the single most useful thing a lay statement can establish, and often the only place that evidence exists.
Where a lay statement would strengthen your claim, the system says so and helps you produce one, filled from what your records already show. You review every word and you sign it. Nothing is submitted without your explicit action.
Missing and unreadable
A record we cannot read is not a record you do not have
Those are completely different problems, and only one of them is yours to fix. A tool that reports both the same way leaves you unable to act on either.
Page quality is graded explicitly. An unreadable page is reported as unreadable, never silently dropped and never counted as an absence of evidence, so you can go request a cleaner copy.
If your STRs are gone
It happens, particularly for older service periods, and it is not automatically fatal. Personnel records, post-service treatment showing continuity, and credible lay statements can carry substantial weight.
What matters is knowing the records are missing before you file, rather than finding out in a decision letter months later.
Common questions
STRs, contentions and lay statements
Where you are in your transition changes which of these records you can still get. Still serving, separating soon, or already out.
Next step
Find out which elements your file already covers
And which documents would close the rest, with the right source named for each one.