Veteran Help

At Veteran Help, we know how crucial strong evidence is for a successful VA disability claim. One of the strongest tools for getting the evidence we need is the Buddy Statement. Your testimony matters, but more than one witness is always better, and often, the VA legally can’t just take your word for it. That’s when we look to the Buddy Statement to help us fill in the gaps.

Who Can Write a Buddy Statement?

The biggest strength of a Buddy Statement is that anyone with relevent information can testify about what they saw and when they saw it, what they heard and when they heard it. For example, this might be someone who served with you and was there when you were injured, or it may be a family member or friend who saw your symptoms after you returned home, or it may be a spouse or partner that was with you during active duty service or that you met shortly after your service.

What Can a Buddy Statement Do for You?

Most buddies aren’t qualified to give a medical diagnosis, but it doesn’t take a professional to see that you were wincing in pain, to talk about how you had to stay home from work because of headaches, or about how you missed family gatherings or stayed away from social events because of mental health. A buddy can testify to anything that can be observed where special training isn’t needed.

Event and When Symptoms Started

A buddy may have been there when you were injured, or they may have witnessed the same stressful events that impacted your mental health. That’s the simplest way for a Buddy Statement to help show an in-service event, but it’s not the only way.

A buddy may have done the same job you did and can give details about the dangers faced or the strain it caused.

Friends or family may be able to testify about how your behavior changed during or after your active-duty service, or about limitations they saw when you returned home that weren’t there before. The better we can show that your symptoms existed during service or right after your separation from the military, the stronger your claim becomes.

Continuity Over Time

Friends, family, and coworkers can also testify about how your symptoms persisted over time, helping fill in gaps where old medical records aren’t available, or where you didn’t receive treatment for any reason.

Severity

Buddy Statements can also help the VA know how bad your condition is right now and in the past. Again, most friends and family aren’t medical professionals, but there are many parts of a disability that can be seen from the outside, and a Buddy Statement adds extra weight with a realistic description of your symptoms and limitations.

Next Steps

When we decide with you that we could use Buddy Statements for any of your conditions—and more than one is common—you can provide us email addresses for us to send out forms to your friends, family, etc., or they can write down their own statements to submit to us. Whatever way a Buddy Statement comes, every statement needs your name, your buddy’s name, their signature, and the date. That goes along with how they know you and what they witnessed.

You can get those to us through any of these methods:

Email: customerservice@veteranhelp.com
Mail: 43 North 470 West, American Fork, UT 84003
Fax: 801-435-8225