Veterans law and the rights of widows and widowers progressed before the Veterans Court as the Court ruled that there is no per se legal bar to reopening a denied accrued benefits claim. The Board found the notion of reopening an accrued benefits claim pursuant to section 5108 inconsistent with the one year requirement that a claim be filed within the year after a veteran's death.
Generally, a widow may only claim accrued benefits based upon the evidence already in a veteran's claim file at the time of death. However, there are circumstances where there is evidence in the possession of the VA, such as medical records, that are not in the claims when an accured benefits claim is denied by VA. In such a case, a widow may file to reopen a previously denied claim for accrued benefits.
The Court in the Quattlebaum Court indicated that Thus, pursuant to this regulation, there may be circumstances – perhaps rare but certainly possible – where documents are in the Secretary's possession at the date of the veteran's death (and therefore are considered to be in the file at the date of death), yet have never been presented to the Agency decisionmakers. Any such document submitted to the decisionmaker subsequent to a denial of an accrued benefits claim would qualify as "new" evidence pursuant to 38 C.F.R. § 3.156(a) ("New evidence means existing evidence not previously submitted to agency decisionmakers."), and might also be material if it (along with evidence previously in the record) "relates to an unestablished fact necessary to substantiate the claim."
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