Substitute Appellants - TISTATechnologies/caseflow GitHub Wiki

In the unfortunate case where a veteran passes away before their case is resolved, a dependent (e.g., a surviving spouse or a child) can legally step into the shoes the veteran and continue on with the case. This can also happen after a case has been resolved and the case has been dismissed through a death dismissal. This dependent is referred to in Caseflow as a substitute appellant. (The process is sometimes called "Appellant substitution.")

(Note that this was initially referred to internally as "granted substitution" and there may be some lingering references to this. Early feedback was that this was confusing terminology, because the granting of the substitution was performed by a Regional Office, not by the Board. Entering a substitute appellant into Caseflow is not "granting" the substitution, and we therefore avoid that term.)

Only Clerk of the Board users may add a substitute appellant to an appeal. In dev or demo environments, the "Clark Bard" user (COB_USER) can be used, and you can search for the file number 54545454.

Information on Substitute Appellants is stored in the AppellantSubstitution model.