FOIA data study, FY 2023 to July 11, 2026
The Quiet Doubling: DIC Denials Since FY2023
Dependency and Indemnity Compensation is a tax-free monthly VA benefit for eligible surviving spouses, children, and parents when a service member dies in the line of duty or a veteran dies from a service-connected cause. A separate provision, 38 U.S.C. 1318, can provide DIC when the veteran met qualifying total disability requirements before death even though the death itself was not service connected.
VA publishes annual counts of new DIC recipients, but much less about the claims behind those awards. A VA workbook released in full under the Freedom of Information Act adds annual receipts, denials, and the legal grant pathways from FY 2023 through partial FY 2026. The clearest change is on the denial side. Denials rose from 10,633 in FY 2023 to 23,212 in FY 2025, an increase of 118.3 percent, while claims received were only 2.9 percent higher. From FY 2024 to FY 2025 alone, denials increased 79.2 percent. On the comparable claims basis available in the release, the denial share rose from 23.1 percent in FY 2023 to 32.4 percent in FY 2025. Grants increased too. The records show a system deciding substantially more DIC claims on both sides, with denials growing considerably faster than grants. They do not show why.
- By Alec Morgan
- The Veteran Benefit Desk
- Published August 21, 2026
- ISSN 3144-0835
- https://doi.org/10.68077/vbd.dic-denials
Independent research; not peer reviewed. Corrections and version notes are published under our Corrections Policy.
Grants and denials, year by year
FY 2025 was a much larger decision year overall. On the comparable claims measure in the release, grants categorized under 38 U.S.C. 1310 and 1318 plus denials increased 38.6 percent from FY 2024. But the two sides did not rise at the same pace. Categorized grants increased 25.1 percent, while denials increased 79.2 percent. That difference is why denials became a larger share of the outcomes in the release.
Receipts changed relatively little across FY 2023 through FY 2025, while the number of grants and denials recorded in the comparable claims tables rose substantially. Because the release does not link receipts to their eventual decisions, it cannot show how much of that increase came from current-year filings, older pending claims, or changes in processing.
- Denials
- Granted claims (1310 + 1318)
The release also carries a separate series of new DIC recipients (45,070, 46,153, 55,700, and 42,485 partial). That series counts beneficiaries rather than granted claims, VA already publishes it in the Annual Benefits Report, and it is not charted against denials here because the two measures use different units. VBA confirmed in writing on August 25, 2026 that this series counts new recipients, that is, new DIC award beneficiaries.
The denial share climbed nine points
We compute the denial share on the comparable claims basis: the denominator is denied claims plus granted claims categorized by VA under 38 U.S.C. 1310 or 1318, so numerator and denominator come from the same counting unit. On that basis the share rose from 23.1 percent in FY 2023 to 25 percent in FY 2024 and 32.4 percent in FY 2025.
The partial FY 2026 data do not yet show another increase. The comparable denial share stands at 30.7 percent, below FY 2025 but still well above FY 2024. The fiscal year is incomplete, so whether FY 2025 marked a peak cannot yet be determined. The data cannot say why the share moved. Candidate explanations range from changes in the claims being filed, to previously denied survivors returning under new PACT Act presumptions, to changes in pending inventory or processing practice, and separating them would take records this release does not contain.
About one in four categorized grants came through 1318
DIC has two main legal doors. Section 1310 covers deaths from service-connected causes. Section 1318 provides a separate route for certain surviving spouses and children when the veteran met specified total disability requirements before death, even when the death itself was not service connected: generally a total rating for the ten years immediately before death, at least five continuous years from discharge, or one year for certain former prisoners of war, with total disability based on individual unemployability counting toward the requirement. VA publishes no split between the two pathways anywhere. Among claims VA categorized as granted under 1310 or 1318, the 1318 pathway accounted for between 25.8 and 27.9 percent in every fiscal year shown, including 12,813 granted claims in FY 2025 alone. Our plain-language guide to the pathway is at DIC under section 1318, explained.
The legal mix of successful claims changed surprisingly little. From FY 2023 to FY 2025, 1310 grants increased 37 percent and 1318 grants increased 38.2 percent, almost exactly the same pace. The 1318 share therefore remained close to one quarter of categorized grants even as overall volume rose, so the grant data do not show a wholesale change in the legal pathway composition of successful claims during the period.
- 1310 (service-connected death)
- 1318 (totally disabled before death)
Automation is part of the background to these figures, but this release cannot measure its effect. The VA Office of Inspector General has documented end-to-end automated DIC grants under 1318 since 2014 and automation of 1310 decisions beginning in late 2019 (Review of Automated Decisions for Veterans' Service-Connected Death Claims, Report 25-00153-47, April 2026). The workbook released for this study does not identify which claims were automated, so the trends here cannot be attributed to automation from these records.
What this does and does not show. A denial is not an error. DIC eligibility depends on the facts and law applicable to each survivor, including the cause of death, the veteran's service-connected disability history, qualifying total disability periods under 1318, and the claimant's relationship to the veteran. The release does not contain enough information to determine why the denial share changed. Possible explanations include differences in the claims being filed, previously denied survivors returning under new PACT Act presumptions, changes in pending inventory, processing practices, or other factors not captured in these aggregate tables.
The release also counts successful DIC activity in two different ways that should not be treated as interchangeable. One series counts new DIC recipients, a beneficiary measure VA also publishes in its Annual Benefits Report, while the 1310 and 1318 table counts granted claims. The two measures differ by 5,612 to 9,728 per year in the release, and the workbook provides no crosswalk explaining that difference, so we present them separately rather than attempting to reconcile them. We asked VA to clarify, and on August 25, 2026 the VBA FOIA office, relaying its data team, confirmed in writing that the recipients measure counts new DIC award beneficiaries and that the 1310 and 1318 categories do not cover all granted DIC claims. The full exchange is posted as a record: written clarification, August 25, 2026 (PDF). Which grant categories fall outside that pair remains undocumented, and our follow-up request for the data dictionary is pending. For the denial share we use only denied claims and the granted claim counts categorized under 1310 and 1318, never the recipient measure.
The FY 2026 cutoffs also differ. The receipts, denials, and average days sheets are labeled through July 11, 2026. The new recipient measure runs through June 30, 2026, which VBA explained on August 25, 2026 reflects a source that reports only end-of-month counts. The 1310 and 1318 worksheet states no cutoff in the workbook itself; VBA's written clarification of August 25, 2026 puts it at July 11, 2026. Finally, average days to complete is grouped by the fiscal year in which a claim was received rather than the year it was completed, so the partial FY 2026 average excludes every claim that remains unresolved and must not be read as evidence that processing suddenly became faster. We do not use that figure anywhere in this report.
Methodology and sources
- Source: fiscal year DIC claims statistics released in full by the Veterans Benefits Administration on August 18, 2026 under FOIA request 26-23676-F, following a search of VA's compensation database by the Pension and Fiduciary Service. Aggregate statistics only; no individual survivor's information was sought or released. The request appears in our FOIA log with the decision letter, and the released workbook is archived unaltered here.
- All figures are transcribed verbatim from the released workbook. Derived figures on this page (denial share, growth rates, 1318 share) are computed from those verbatim values, and the computation is stated next to each figure.
- Denial share uses the comparable claims basis: denied claims plus granted claims categorized under 38 U.S.C. 1310 or 1318. The workbook does not state whether those two categories cover every granted DIC claim in the underlying system, which is one of the definitional questions we have put to VA.
- What this release adds to the public record: VA already publishes annual counts of new DIC recipients in its Annual Benefits Report. We did not locate a comparable VA public series that combines annual DIC receipts and denials with granted claim counts and the 1310 and 1318 legal pathways. Those additional measures are what this FOIA release contributes.
- For reference only: a simple day-rate annualization of partial FY 2026 would produce roughly 81,667 receipts and 20,948 denials. This is not a forecast and does not account for seasonal or operational variation; the report's findings do not rely on it.
- Provenance: the SHA-256 hash of the original VA workbook as released is 1c8a27f032aed2b6b5658cdd6aa0e07a3fadff66e91acedd745ad03ee6ee05c2. The SHA-256 hash of the derived CSV offered below is 4cc716e4c6241994d09c5cfefb0f2be2b37c0db3510645b55fc6e5a9a8d28eba.
Writing about VA benefits? You are welcome to reference this page. Copy the citation below and link back so your readers can verify the source.