Short Answer
The VA can reduce a disability rating, but not easily and not without warning. Three time-based rules make it progressively harder: at five years your rating is stabilized, at ten years your service connection is locked in, and at twenty years your rating level is protected for life. Each rule protects something different, and knowing which one applies to you matters.
Ask a group of veterans whether the VA can lower their rating and you’ll get a dozen answers, most of them wrong in one direction or the other. Some are certain their rating is permanent the day it’s granted. Others live with a low-grade dread that one bad exam could undo everything.
Neither is right. The VA can reduce a rating — but it has to clear a real bar to do it, and the longer you’ve held the rating, the higher that bar gets.
What does the 5-year rule protect?
Once a rating has been in place for five years at the same level, it’s considered stabilized under 38 CFR 3.344.
That changes what the VA has to prove. It can’t reduce you based on one good day at one exam. It has to review your entire medical history, not just the most recent appointment, and show sustained material improvement — improvement that’s likely to hold up under the ordinary conditions of daily life and work.
The burden sits with the VA, not with you. That’s worth repeating, because most veterans assume the opposite.
What does the 10-year rule protect?
After ten years, the VA can’t sever service connection for that condition, under 38 CFR 3.957. The exceptions are narrow: proven fraud, or a finding that you didn’t have the required service or character of discharge.
Here’s the part that gets misunderstood. The 10-year rule protects the fact that your condition is service-connected. It does not freeze the percentage. Your rating can still go up or down based on the evidence — but the VA can’t take the condition off the books entirely.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. As long as service connection holds, the door stays open for an increase later.
What does the 20-year rule protect?
This is the strongest protection in the system. Under 38 CFR 3.951(b), a disability continuously rated at or above a certain level for twenty years or more can’t be reduced below that level, except for fraud.
But read the language carefully, because this is where a lot of veterans get a nasty surprise. The protected floor is the lowest level you held during those twenty years — not your current rating.
Say you were rated 70%, dropped to 50% in year seven, and climbed back to 70% five years later. Your twenty-year floor is 50%, not 70%. The 70% has its own clock, and it started over when the rating was restored.
What if you get a proposed reduction letter?
A reduction never arrives out of nowhere. Under 38 CFR 3.105(e), the VA has to send a proposed reduction notice first, and two deadlines start running that day.
You have 60 days to submit evidence. You have 30 days to request a predetermination hearing.
The 30-day deadline is the one to circle. If you request that hearing in time, your payments continue at the current amount while the case is decided. Miss it, and you may be living on the reduced rate before you’ve had your say. Most people focus on the 60-day window because it sounds like the bigger number. The 30-day one protects your income.
Does asking for an increase put your rating at risk?
This fear keeps veterans from claiming conditions that have genuinely gotten worse, and it’s mostly unfounded.
Filing for an increase does prompt the VA to look at the condition’s current severity. But every protection above still applies in full. A stabilized rating still requires sustained material improvement. A twenty-year floor still holds. And the VA still has to follow the proposed-reduction process before anything changes.
If your condition has worsened, that’s worth claiming.
Key Takeaways
- The VA can reduce a rating, but the burden of proof is on the VA — not on you.
- Five years: your rating is stabilized and can’t be cut based on a single exam.
- Ten years: your service connection can’t be severed, though the percentage can still change.
- Twenty years: your rating can’t drop below the lowest level you held during that period.
- A proposed reduction gives you 60 days to submit evidence and 30 days to request a hearing that keeps your payments intact.
The Clock Started the Day That Letter Was Dated
If you’ve received a proposed reduction notice, you have 30 days to request the hearing that keeps your payments at their current level, and 60 days to submit evidence. Those deadlines don’t wait. Tucker Disability Law can review which protections apply to your rating and respond inside the window that matters.
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