Rating protection

When Can The VA Take It Back?

Three rules decide whether a service-connected rating can be cut, and every one of them runs on a date you already have. Here is where each clock starts, what it actually protects, and what VA must do before it touches your check.

An older veteran in a plaid shirt at his kitchen table, reading an official decision letter with a worried expression

Read this first

Four things veterans get wrong before they even open the letter

Most of the fear around reductions comes from not knowing which rule applies to you. Sort these four out and the rest of the page is arithmetic.

Cutting your percentage and erasing your service connection are two different attacks

A reduction moves the percentage down. A severance wipes out the finding that your service caused the condition at all. They run on different clocks, they take different paperwork, and the second one is far harder for VA to do. Veterans lose sleep over the wrong one all the time.

The clock starts on the effective date — not the day the letter came

Every one of these rules counts from the effective date of that evaluation to the effective date of the reduction. Not the date you filed. Not the postmark. The effective date is printed on the decision letter that granted the rating, and it is the only date that matters here.

Nobody at VA sends you a letter that says "you are protected now"

These protections attach silently. There is no notice, no flag on your account, no phone call. You are the only person tracking your own dates, which is how veterans agree to things they never had to agree to.

Protection is about them taking it away — not about you asking for more

You can still file for an increase on a protected rating. But understand the difference: an evaluation with twenty years behind it has a floor it cannot fall below, and an evaluation granted two years ago has none. Same claim, very different exposure.

The three clocks

Five years, ten years, twenty years

They are not three versions of the same rule. Each one protects a different thing, and knowing which is which is the difference between answering a proposal and ignoring one.

A paper wall calendar in a home hallway with one date circled in red marker and a plain white envelope tucked behind it

Five years

38 CFR §3.344(a)–(c)

The stabilized rating rule

Once an evaluation has continued at the same level for five years or more, VA does not get to reduce it on the strength of one exam that went badly.

What it protects

The examination VA relies on has to be as full and complete as the one the rating was built on, and the record has to show material improvement that is sustained under the ordinary conditions of your life — work, family, the way the day actually goes. Not one good hour in an exam room with a stranger.

What it does not

It does not make a reduction impossible. It raises the standard for one. And it does not apply at all below five years — a rating in place less than that can be reduced on any examination showing improvement.

How the clock is counted: Effective date of that evaluation level, to the effective date of the proposed reduction.

Temporary or episodic improvement is not enough — the question is whether it holds.
A shorter exam, by a different examiner, using a different method, is not "as full and complete."
If VA never does this analysis, the reduction is not merely wrong — it is void.
A rating that bounced up and down does not have a clean five-year run at one level.

A Black veteran in his mid-sixties wearing glasses, organizing a thick accordion folder of medical records into piles at a desk

Ten years

38 USC §1159 · 38 CFR §3.957

Service connection can no longer be severed

Ten years after service connection took effect, VA can no longer take the position that your service did not cause the condition.

What it protects

The link between your service and that disease is settled. VA cannot sever it. The only ways out are a finding that the original grant was obtained by fraud, or that the person did not actually have the required service or character of discharge.

What it does not

It does not freeze the percentage. A service connection ten years old and rated at a given level can still have that level reduced — the connection survives, the number can move.

How the clock is counted: Effective date of the grant of service connection, to the date VA proposes severance.

This applies to a presumptive grant exactly as it applies to one won with a nexus letter.
A later change in science or in the presumptive lists does not reach back and undo a connection already ten years old.
VA carries the burden, and severance has its own proposal process — it cannot happen in a silent rating decision.
If a severance proposal ever lands on a connection this old, that is the moment to get an accredited set of eyes on the file.

An older Hispanic veteran and his wife sitting at a dining table reviewing printed paperwork together with a laptop open

Twenty years

38 CFR §3.951(b)

The protected evaluation — the hard floor

An evaluation continuously at or above a given level for twenty years or more cannot be reduced below that level. This is the strongest protection in the book.

What it protects

The floor. Absent fraud, that level is yours. A reduction taken below it is void, and the level goes back where it was.

What it does not

It protects the level, not the diagnostic code and not the future. VA can re-rate you under a different code at the same or a higher level, and nothing above the floor is locked in.

How the clock is counted: Effective date of that evaluation, to the effective date of the reduction — and it has to be **continuous**. A stretch spent below the level breaks the run.

The run does not have to sit at one exact percentage. It is "at or above" a level, so a rating that climbed and came back down still has a run at the lower level.
This is the protection aging veterans most often already have and least often know about.
It says nothing about climbing — a protected floor does not stop you filing for more.
Twenty years is counted to the day. If you are close, the date matters more than the argument.

Your own dates

Run your effective date through the three clocks

Nothing you enter leaves your phone — there is no account and nothing is saved. This is arithmetic on a date you already have, so you know which rule you are standing on before you talk to anybody.

Check your own clock

When does each protection attach to your rating?

Enter the effective date of the evaluation you are asking about — the month and year that percentage started, which is printed on the decision letter that granted it. Not the day you filed, and not the day the letter arrived.

Toxic exposure specifics

Why this lands harder on an exposure claim

Exposure claims are young, they are mostly cancers, and they were granted in a wave. That combination puts a lot of veterans in the exact window where the protections have not attached yet.

Every PACT Act grant is in the least protected window there is

The law was signed August 10, 2022. An evaluation with a 2022 effective date reaches five years in 2027, ten years in 2032, and does not hit twenty until 2042. If your toxic exposure rating came out of that wave, you have no floor yet — you have a start date.

A cancer rating at total is written to end

The malignant neoplasm codes — respiratory under DC 6819, genitourinary under DC 7528, and others built the same way — carry a total rating during active disease and treatment, then a mandatory VA examination six months after treatment stops. The residuals get rated from there. That drop is in the code itself, and a rating that only sat at total for a year never had five years to stabilize. Expect that letter. Do not be ambushed by it.

A presumptive connection is a connection

The ten-year bar does not care how you won. Presumptive or direct, it is service connection, and it hardens on the same schedule. This matters because presumptive lists get rewritten — and a connection already ten years old is out of reach when they are.

A TERA concession has no clock of its own

A TERA determination is a finding about where you were and what you handled. It is not an evaluation, so no protection date attaches to it. That is exactly why it is worth getting into the file early and keeping your own copy — the concession is the thing a future claim leans on.

A veteran and an advocate reading through a stack of service and treatment records

Both options are free · No obligation

Not sure where you stand? Let us look at it.

Tell us what happened and what the VA said. An accredited agent reads it and tells you honestly what he sees — no cost, no obligation. When you are ready to have us fight it, register and we start.

An accredited agent personally reviews every request — we’ll reach out within 48 hours. Or call 702-992-4883.

The process they owe you

What VA has to do before it cuts your check

A reduction is a process with steps and dates in it, and VA skipping a step is its own argument. The letter that says "proposed" is not the letter that says "done."

38 CFR §3.105(e)

They have to propose it first, in writing

When a reduction would cut what VA pays you, VA must issue a rating proposing the reduction with detailed reasons, sent to your address of record. The day that arrives, nothing has been taken yet.

38 CFR §3.105(e)

You get 60 days to put evidence in

Sixty days to submit additional evidence. If nothing comes in, VA takes final action, and the reduction takes effect the last day of the month in which a 60-day period from that final notice expires. Silence is what they are counting on.

38 CFR §3.105(i)

You can demand a hearing within 30 days

A predetermination hearing, requested within thirty days of the proposal. It happens before the decision, not after it — which makes it worth far more than an appeal filed later.

38 CFR §3.327(b)(2)

A lot of these exams should never have been scheduled

Re-examinations are not requested where the disability is static, where it has persisted without material improvement for five years or more, where it is permanent with no likelihood of improvement, where the rating is the scheduled minimum, where a reduction would not change the combined evaluation, or for veterans over 55 except in unusual circumstances.

What the courts have said

The words that get bad reductions thrown out

Four holdings do most of the work when a reduction is fought. You do not need the citations to use them — you need to know what they require VA to prove.

Brown v. Brown

Improvement means improvement in the ability to function under the ordinary conditions of life and work — not a better number on one examination.

Kitchens v. Brown

VA has to actually find that the improvement will be maintained under those ordinary conditions. A reduction without that finding does not stand.

Dofflemyer v. Derwinski

Where VA fails to observe the stabilized-rating requirements, the reduction is void from the start — not merely reversible on appeal.

Schafrath v. Derwinski

The rating must be reviewed against the entire recorded history, not the newest examination read in isolation.

Honest limits

Where these rules stop working

Anybody who tells you a rating is untouchable is selling something. Here is the honest edge of each protection.

Fraud is the exception written into all of it

If VA finds the original grant was obtained by fraud, none of these clocks hold — not five, not ten, not twenty. That is the one door left open on purpose.

Age 55 is a scheduling practice, not a shield

It keeps most veterans off the routine re-examination calendar. It does not stop a reduction if evidence of improvement reaches VA some other way — a treatment record, a hospital note, your own claim for something else.

Permanent and total is not the same as protected

P&T means VA does not expect improvement and stops scheduling exams. It is a finding about your condition, not a twenty-year floor, and a finding can be revisited.

If the reduction already happened, this is not your page

That is an appeal, and the clock on it is running right now. The four lanes and their deadlines are laid out in full on this site.

Nothing on this page tells you what your rating is or should be. Any percentage or dollar figure you see quoted anywhere — here, in a calculator, on a forum — is an estimate until VA puts it in a decision letter. Confirm your own dates and figures on VA.gov or with VA at 800-827-1000.

The four appeal lanesAlready reduced or denied? Every lane, every deadline, every form.The exam pushback guideWhat to do when the examiner writes something that is not true.TERA and ILERGet the exposure concession into the file before you need it.Rating calculatorSee how the levels combine — every figure there is an estimate.

Every clock on this page starts on an effective date — which is why a wrong effective date quietly costs a veteran years of protection as well as money. Albert built a separate free site that takes that fight apart in detail: the effective date review.

Free review

Got a letter proposing a reduction? The 60 days started when it was dated.

Albert Thombs is a VA-accredited claims agent, accreditation #45147. Send the proposal and the decision letter that granted the rating, and he will tell you which clock you are on and whether the proposal followed the rules it had to follow.

702-992-4883

Do not skip the predetermination hearing because you plan to appeal later. The hearing happens before the decision. An appeal happens after they have already stopped paying you.

When Can The VA Take It Back?

Four things veterans get wrong before they even open the letter

Cutting your percentage and erasing your service connection are two different attacks

The clock starts on the effective date — not the day the letter came

Nobody at VA sends you a letter that says "you are protected now"

Protection is about them taking it away — not about you asking for more

Five years, ten years, twenty years

The stabilized rating rule

Service connection can no longer be severed

The protected evaluation — the hard floor

Run your effective date through the three clocks

When does each protection attach to your rating?

Why this lands harder on an exposure claim

Every PACT Act grant is in the least protected window there is

A cancer rating at total is written to end

A presumptive connection is a connection

A TERA concession has no clock of its own

Not sure where you stand? Let us look at it.

What VA has to do before it cuts your check

They have to propose it first, in writing

You get 60 days to put evidence in

You can demand a hearing within 30 days

A lot of these exams should never have been scheduled

The words that get bad reductions thrown out

Brown v. Brown

Kitchens v. Brown

Dofflemyer v. Derwinski

Schafrath v. Derwinski

Where these rules stop working

Fraud is the exception written into all of it

Age 55 is a scheduling practice, not a shield

Permanent and total is not the same as protected

If the reduction already happened, this is not your page

Got a letter proposing a reduction? The 60 days started when it was dated.

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