Nobody Is Required to Tell You This: Six VA Rules

A short index to six VA rules that are published, current, and almost never surfaced at the moment a veteran or survivor needs them — from the DIC 10-year rule to a funding fee refund that has to be requested. Each one links to a full explanation with 2026 figures and the exact VA.gov source page.

Every rule in this series is published on VA.gov. None of them is a secret, a loophole, or a trick. You can read all six on government websites this afternoon.

What they have in common is quieter than that. Each one matters at a specific moment — a death, a separation date, an enrollment decision, a closing — and at that moment there is nobody in the room whose job it is to bring it up. The VA decides the claims it receives. A school certifies the enrollment in front of it. A lender closes the loan on the terms that exist that day. None of them is doing anything wrong, and none of them is required to tell you what you did not ask about.

Every figure in this series was checked against VA.gov on July 31, 2026.

The six

A surviving spouse can qualify for DIC when the death was not service-connected. If the veteran was rated totally disabling for the 10 years before death — or since discharge and for the last 5 years, or for 1 year in the case of a former prisoner of war who died after September 30, 1999 — the cause of death stops mattering. TDIU counts as totally disabling.

Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits can only be transferred while you are still serving. The request goes to the Defense Department through milConnect, not the VA. After you separate you can still move months among dependents already on the transfer, but you can never add anyone new. It is one of the few genuinely irreversible deadlines in the system.

A VA funding fee can be refundable, but only if you ask. If your compensation is later granted with an effective date earlier than your loan closing, the fee — roughly $3,750 to $9,900 on a $300,000 loan — may come back. The VA's instruction is to contact your regional loan center. Nothing triggers it automatically.

Chapter 35 education benefits changed on August 1, 2023. Eligibility arising on or after that date has no time limit and no age window. Eligibility that arose before it still runs under the old 8-year, 10-year, and 20-year clocks. Two families with qualifying events three weeks apart get very different benefits.

A child has to give up DIC to use Chapter 35. A spouse does not. It is one sentence on the VA's page, and it creates a real decision from age 18 — $356.66 a month as a school child against $1,574.00 a month as a full-time DEA student.

Yellow Ribbon terms are set by the school, not the VA. The school decides how many students it funds and how much each one gets; slots are first-come, first-served. The VA publishes the ceilings in a tool most people never find, and even that tool cannot tell you how many slots are left this year.

What they have in common

Three of these are deadlines, and only one of them is truly final. Two are elections, where the trade-off is real and the right answer depends on the family. One is money already paid that can come back.

None of them requires a lawyer. Four of them start with a phone call. All six turn on a date — a rating effective date, a separation date, August 1, 2023, a closing date — which means the first useful step is usually finding a document, not filing a form.

How to use this

Read the one that matches your situation. Each piece names the exact VA.gov page the rule comes from, the phone number for the office that handles it, and the date the figures were verified, so you can check the current numbers yourself before you rely on anything here.

This site does not file claims, does not take a percentage, and has nothing to sell. Accredited veterans service organizations file claims for free, and the VA's own pages remain the authority on every number quoted here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these rules hidden or unofficial?

No. Every one is published on VA.gov, and each article in the series names the exact page it came from and the date it was checked. What makes them worth writing about is that nobody in the process has a duty to raise them at the moment they matter.

Which of these has a hard deadline?

Transferring the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The request must be made through milConnect while you are still on active duty or in the Selected Reserve, and there is no late-filing or appeal path afterward. The DIC and Chapter 35 rules turn on dates that already happened rather than on a window you can miss by acting slowly.

Do I need a lawyer or a paid service for any of this?

No. Accredited veterans service organizations help with VA claims at no cost, the VA’s call centers answer eligibility questions directly, and a school certifying official answers Yellow Ribbon questions. Every phone number needed is listed in the individual articles.

How current are the figures?

Every figure in the series was checked against VA.gov on July 31, 2026. Compensation and DIC rates change each December with the cost-of-living adjustment, education rates change on October 1, and Yellow Ribbon agreements are renegotiated each academic year, so confirm current amounts before relying on them.