Veteran Discharge Upgrades - What You Need to Know

You should know that in order to upgrade a discharge, if you're a veteran who left the service with something less than an honorable characterization of service, you got to fill out a DD form 293.

When you fill out a DD form 293, there are some boxes towards the bottom that allow you to tell the board that there was a mental health issue at the time of your service. Now some people they get into misconduct or at least alleged misconduct while they're serving, and the command decides they're going to separate them. And when they do separate them, it might be with an other than honorable or even a general under honorable conditions, but nonetheless it takes away VA benefits.

So when we are asking the Department of Defense review boards to upgrade a client's discharge, we often want to ask if there was any kind of documented mental health conditions at the time of their service. Because over the years, the Secretaries of Defense have issued various memorandum, and these memorandum are trying to understand that the military didn't really appreciate what PTSD symptoms looked like, or any kind of mental health symptoms looked like as it related to misconduct.

So, for example, if a service member is using weed or drinking copious amounts of alcohol because they're coping with whatever's going on internally, and they recently got back from a deployment and they just don't know what's going on.

Those are factors that today the board, the discharge review boards for the various branches of service should be considering. And when clients present evidence of their mental health issues to the board, the board is required to use a more lenient standard.

They're supposed to provide liberal consideration of that applicant's petition. That's why it's important for any kind of veteran who left the service with a less than honorable, and now wants to upgrade their discharge. They should be speaking with an attorney to figure out if they qualify for liberal consideration.

If they do, that's going to increase their chances of upgrading that discharge.

Feel free to give the Military Law Center a call today, and we can walk through this entire process with you.

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