Who Can Charge You

1. Question one

   Are they on VA's list?

   Only accredited people may be paid to prepare, present, or argue your claim. A company can call itself a consultant, a coach, or a medical evidence service. The name does not matter. The work does.

   A company saying it only gathers "medical evidence" and does not touch your claim is the most common way around this rule. A federal court rejected that exact defense in 2026.

2. Question two

   Has VA decided your claim yet?

   This is the one most veterans do not know. No fee may be charged for work done before VA issues its first decision on your claim. Not by anyone. Not by an accredited attorney either.

   So if you are filing for the first time and someone wants to be paid for helping you file, the answer is no, regardless of who they are.

3. Question three

   What exactly is the fee, and when does the bill come?

   Get it in writing before you sign anything. The complaint veterans make most often is not that they paid. It is that the bill showed up with the award letter, for an amount nobody explained, for work they felt they did themselves.

   Ask one question: what is the largest amount I could owe you, in dollars, and on what day is it due? Anyone who will not answer that plainly has told you something.

Four rules cover nearly everything.

One. Nobody gets paid before the first decision. Federal law bars any fee for services provided before VA gives you notice of its first decision on your claim.

Two. After that first decision, only accredited attorneys and accredited claims agents may charge. They also have to have a written fee agreement signed by you, and be formally appointed as your representative.

Three. An accredited VSO representative can never charge you. The DAV, VFW, American Legion, and your county or state veterans office all work through accredited representatives. Their help is free, by law, permanently. That is not a discount. They are barred from taking your money.

Four. There is a ceiling on what an attorney or agent can take. A fee of 20 percent of your past-due benefits or less is presumed reasonable. A fee above one third of your past-due benefits is presumed unreasonable. If VA pays the fee directly out of your back pay, it cannot exceed 20 percent.

The gap you should know about

Until 2006, federal law made it a crime to charge a veteran an unauthorized fee for claim help. Congress removed that penalty. What is left is a rule with almost nothing behind it.

So VA's main tool against a company charging veterans without accreditation is a warning letter. Reporting by The War Horse found more than forty of those letters went out over ten years, and that at least 29 of 38 warned companies were still in business as of late 2025.

That gap is why the real action has moved to two places: state legislatures, and private lawsuits brought by veterans themselves.

Twelve states have passed something. They do not all do the same thing, and the difference matters. A disclosure law does not make the fee illegal. It only makes the company tell you about it.

If your state is not on this list

Federal law still covers you. Everything in the section above still applies. What you do not have is a state penalty or an easy way to sue under state law. Your practical options are a complaint to VA, a complaint to your state attorney general, and in some cases a private lawsuit.

You are not the first and the number is not small. Here is what is available.

• Report it to VA. VA takes complaints about accreditation violations in writing at the Office of General Counsel, and by phone at 202-461-7699. VA publishes a guide on how to file.
• Report pension-related schemes to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. VA directs these complaints there itself.
• Contact your state attorney general. This is where the results have actually come from. In January 2026, Texas settled with one large claims company, which agreed to stop collecting on an estimated $6.8 million in veteran debt.
• Know that veterans are suing and winning. In May 2026 a federal court in North Carolina ruled that a claims consulting company had illegally prepared and presented claims for a fee without accreditation, rejecting its argument that it was only a consultant. That case is a certified class action.
• Get an accredited representative on your claim now, whatever happened before. It costs nothing and it is never too late to change who represents you.

Congress is being pushed in two opposite directions. As of today, none of it has become law, and the rules above are what govern.

VA also proposed tightening its accreditation rules in October 2024. As of this date no final rule has published, so the proposal is not in force.