Article
Can the VA Take Away Your Rating?
Yes, in narrow cases. The VA can lower a rating it already pays, and it can end service connection it already granted. Neither one can happen quietly.
This page is about what the rules actually require, and what the Board of Veterans' Appeals has done when veterans pushed back. Everything here comes from the regulations and from the Board's own decisions.
New here? Everything under Decisions is free: one page per condition and one per pairing, each built from what the Board actually did. Nothing to sign up for.
The VA has to tell you first
A reduction starts with a letter, not with a smaller payment. The rule on reducing a rating is strict about the order of events.
The VA writes a proposal. It has to set out every material fact and the reasons. It goes to your address of record. From that date you have 60 days to send evidence that the rating should stay where it is.
You also have 30 days to ask for a hearing before anyone decides. That deadline is shorter, and it is the one people miss. If you ask in time, your payments continue at the current level until the final decision is made.
Even then the money does not change that month. The reduction takes effect on the last day of the month in which a 60 day period from the notice of the final decision expires.
Add it up and a proposal letter is not a bill. It is the opening of a process you are part of.
What the VA has to show
A rating is not reduced because one exam looked better. The regulation asks for more than that, and it asks for more as the years go by.
If your rating has been at the same level for five years or more, a second rule is added on top. Three things have to be true.
- The whole record was reviewed, not only the newest exam.
- The new exam is at least as full and complete as the one the rating was based on. A shorter exam cannot be the basis of a reduction.
- The improvement is reasonably certain to hold under the ordinary conditions of life.
That last one carries the most weight. A good day in a quiet exam room is not the test. The test is whether the improvement holds up while you work and live.
Some ratings are off the table
Two protections run on a clock. Both hold unless the VA shows fraud.
A rating held continuously at or above a level for 20 years cannot be reduced below that level. The clock runs from the effective date of the evaluation to the effective date of the reduction.
Service connection in effect for 10 years cannot be severed at all. The exceptions are fraud, or military records showing the person did not have the required service or character of discharge.
Severance is hard before 10 years too. The VA has to show the original grant was clearly and unmistakably wrong, and the burden of proof sits with the government, not with you.
Total ratings and unemployability
A total rating has its own rule. It is not reduced without an examination showing material improvement, and the question is again whether that improvement was reached under the ordinary conditions of life.
If you are paid at the total rate because you cannot work, going back to work does not end it by itself. The rating cannot be reduced on that basis unless you hold the job for 12 consecutive months.
What brings a review
Most reductions start with a reexamination. The VA can ask for one when it needs to check that a condition still exists, or how bad it is now.
It is not supposed to schedule a routine future exam in any of these situations.
- The disability is established as static.
- The findings have persisted without material improvement for five years or more.
- The condition is permanent and there is no likelihood of improvement.
- You are over 55, except in unusual circumstances.
- The rating is the minimum the schedule prescribes.
- Your combined rating would not change even if that one went down.
The line about age 55 is real and it is in the regulation. Read it for what it says. It is about routine future exams, not a promise that nothing can ever be reviewed.
The mistake that costs the most
Missing a scheduled reexamination is the fastest way to lose a rating, and the easiest one to avoid.
If you do not report, the VA sends a notice and gives you 60 days. Here is the part worth remembering. If you tell the VA you are willing to report before the payment is reduced, the action is put on hold and the exam is rescheduled.
Answer the letter. Even a late answer that says you will attend changes what happens next.
What the Board's decisions show
We have indexed 1,501,587 Board decisions. In 18,947 of them a rating reduction or a restoration was one of the questions.
The Board reached a decision on 12,660 of those. It put the rating back in 8,079, which is 63.8 percent. Among the ones decided since 2019 the share is 77.3 percent.
Read that for what it is, because it is not a prediction. Those are appeals from veterans who fought the reduction and whose case reached the Board. Veterans who let a proposal go unanswered are not in the number.
The reasons are the useful part. In 1,392 of the 3,032 decisions the Board decided for the veteran since 2019, the decision uses the phrase void ab initio. It means the reduction never legally took effect, because the office that made it did not follow the rules above. In 2,547 of them the Board weighs whether the improvement holds under the ordinary conditions of life.
So the two things that decide these cases are the two things this page is about. Did the VA follow its own procedure, and does the improvement hold up in a real life.
Every condition on this site has its own free page under Decisions, built the same way: what the Board did, how often, and the decisions behind it.
If a proposal letter arrives
- Find the date on the letter. Write down the day 30 days later and the day 60 days later.
- Ask for the hearing in writing before the 30 day mark, even if you are not sure you want one. Asking is what keeps your payment where it is while the case is decided.
- Send evidence before the 60 day mark. Treatment records from the period the VA says you improved are the strongest thing you have.
- Describe in plain words what the condition does to your work and your day. The ordinary conditions of life is the legal test, and you are the one who can describe them.
None of this requires a lawyer or a fee. It requires answering on time, in writing, with the records that show what your condition is actually doing.
Start with what the Board actually decided
Every condition has a free page here, built from the Board's own decisions: what it granted, what it denied, and what it sent back. You file your own claim.
Sources
- The proposal letter, the 60 days, and the 30 day hearing request that keeps your payment where it is, 38 CFR 3.105(e) and (i).
- Severance of service connection, and the burden of proof sitting with the government, 38 CFR 3.105(d).
- The extra protections for a rating held at the same level for five years or more, 38 CFR 3.344.
- The rule on continuing a total rating, and on going back to work, 38 CFR 3.343.
- The 20 year protection on a rating, 38 CFR 3.951(b).
- The 10 year protection on service connection, 38 CFR 3.957.
- When the VA is not supposed to schedule a routine future exam, 38 CFR 3.327(b)(2).
- What happens if you miss a reexamination, and how to stop it, 38 CFR 3.655(c).
This article is education, not legal advice. Rules quoted are from 38 CFR Parts 3 and 4, as published on the government's eCFR website. Board decisions are public records, linked at their source.
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