The clock that ends in January

Published August 19, 2026. The benefits-news items below were current as of that date. This is an archived issue of our weekly email — subscribe here to get new issues first.

Nothing changed this week. The calendar did.

No new DFAS rule, no rate change, no CRSC policy shift. That is worth saying plainly, because plenty of sites will tell you otherwise. The next COLA data point — the August CPI-W, second of the three readings that set the 2027 adjustment — does not publish until September, and the final rate is announced in mid-October. Anything quoted as a “2027 COLA” before then is a projection.

What is moving is the calendar, and it is moving against retirees who are still thinking about applying.

DFAS runs one election window a year for retirees who qualify for both CRDP and CRSC. It falls in January — for 2026 it ran January 1 through January 31 — and the election letter goes out the December before. You may receive one program or the other, never both, and DFAS does not switch you automatically. If the window closes without an election, you sit with what you have for another twelve months. (Source: DFAS, Retired Military & Annuitants, CRDP/CRSC Open Season guidance.)

Now count backward. Army CRSC applications are adjudicated by HRC, and HRC tells callers to expect roughly 120 business days — about six months on a calendar, not four. A packet that goes in this month is in position to have an answer before the January window. A packet that goes in November is not. That is the whole argument for not waiting: the cost is not a few weeks, it is a full election cycle.

The VA claim form is going from 15 pages to 5

VBA is rewriting VA Form 21-526EZ, the application for disability compensation. The Federal Register notice, published June 23, describes cutting the form from fifteen pages to five and the estimated time to complete it from 25 minutes to 15, with the shorter version targeted for the end of this calendar year. Public comment closes August 24, 2026, through regulations.gov. (Source: 91 FR, VA information collection notice 2026-12555, published June 23, 2026.)

Shorter is friendlier, and for most claimants it is a real improvement. For a CRSC case it cuts both ways.

CRSC is built on the ratings that come out of that form — but the CRSC board is not asking the same question the VA rater asked. A form with fewer lines to describe an injury means fewer places where the circumstances of that injury land in the claim file. Whatever the form no longer captures has to be carried by what you attach to it: service treatment records from the time of injury, award citations, line-of-duty and incident documentation.

What to do with that. Comment if you want to. Either way, plan for a claim file where the story of how you were hurt lives in the evidence, not in the form.

Treating your VA rating decision as proof the injury was combat-related

It is not, and this is the most common reason a well-organized packet still comes back denied.

The VA decided one thing: that a condition is connected to your service. CRSC asks a different question entirely — whether the condition resulted from armed conflict, hazardous service, an instrumentality of war, or conditions simulating war. A 70 percent rating for a back condition tells the board what is wrong with your back. It says nothing about the vehicle rollover that caused it.

If the how is not documented in the record from around the time it happened, the rating percentage alone will not carry it. Retirees lose good cases this way — not because the injury was not combat-related, but because nothing in the file ever said so.