What is the VA 5-year rule?

Under 38 C.F.R. § 3.344, a rating held continuously at the same level for five years or more is treated as stabilized. VA cannot reduce it based on a single examination, and must show sustained material improvement under the ordinary conditions of life and work. It raises the standard of proof; it does not make the rating untouchable.

What is the VA 10-year rule?

Under 38 U.S.C. § 1159 and 38 C.F.R. § 3.957, service connection that has been in effect for 10 years or more cannot be severed except on a showing of fraud, or that the veteran lacked the required service or character of discharge. It protects the service connection itself, not the percentage.

What is the VA 20-year rule?

Under 38 C.F.R. § 3.951(b), a disability continuously rated at or above a given percentage for 20 years or more cannot be reduced below that percentage except on a showing that the rating was based on fraud. The protected floor is the lowest level held during that period.

When does the clock start?

On the effective date of the rating or the grant of service connection, not the date on the decision letter. Those dates are often months or years apart, and the difference decides whether a protection applies.

Does the 10-year rule stop VA from lowering my percentage?

No. This is the most common misunderstanding. VA can reduce a protected service-connected condition's rating, in some cases to 0%, while the service connection itself stays intact. What survives is the connection to service, which preserves your ability to seek an increase later and to claim secondary conditions.

Is a 20-year protected rating the same as permanent and total?

No. Permanent and total is a finding about your disability picture that carries its own benefits, including certain dependent benefits. A 20-year protected rating is a floor below which VA cannot reduce you. A veteran can have one without the other.

What should I do if I receive a proposed reduction notice?

Do not ignore it. You generally have 60 days to submit evidence and 30 days to request a predetermination hearing under 38 C.F.R. § 3.105(e). Those deadlines are short, and the procedural requirements VA must follow are themselves a common source of error.

The VA 5-Year, 10-Year, and 20-Year Rules: What Each One Actually Protects

If you spend any time in veteran forums or comment sections, you will run into the “5-year rule,” the “10-year rule,” and the “20-year rule.” They get repeated constantly, usually in shorthand, and the shorthand is almost always wrong in a way that matters.

The rules are real. They are written into federal regulation. But each one protects something different, and none of them means what most veterans are told they mean. Understanding the difference is the difference between panicking over a letter that cannot hurt you and ignoring one that can.

Here is what each rule actually does.

VA rating protections: at 5 years a rating becomes stabilized and cannot be reduced on a single exam; at 10 years service connection cannot be severed, though the percentage can still drop; at 20 years the percentage gets a floor at the lowest level held continuously. Every clock starts at your effective date, not your decision letter.

First: What Problem These Rules Solve

VA can re-examine you. That authority does not expire. If a re-examination shows improvement, VA can propose to reduce your rating, and if the reduction goes through, your monthly compensation drops.

The protection rules exist because Congress and VA recognized that at some point, a rating a veteran has lived on for years or decades should not be undone casually. So the regulations make it progressively harder for VA to take a rating away as time passes. That is the whole architecture. Each rule is another layer of difficulty, not a wall.

Keep that framing in mind, because it explains why every one of these rules has an exception.

The 5-Year Rule: Stabilized Ratings

What it protects: the evidentiary standard VA must meet to reduce you.

Under 38 C.F.R. § 3.344, a rating that has been continued at the same level for five years or more is treated as stabilized. Once a rating is stabilized, VA has to clear a meaningfully higher bar:

It cannot reduce based on a single examination. A one-time exam showing a good day is not enough. The regulation specifically warns against reductions based on examinations less full and complete than the ones that established the rating in the first place.

It has to show sustained material improvement. Not fluctuation. Not a temporary period of doing better. The improvement must be reasonably certain to be maintained.

The improvement has to hold up under the ordinary conditions of life. This phrase does a lot of work. It means improvement while rested, medicated, and sitting in an examination room does not count if you still cannot function at work or at home. Courts have taken this requirement seriously.

VA has to look at the entire record. Not the most recent exam in isolation. The whole history of the disability.

What it does not do: it does not stop VA from examining you, and it does not stop VA from reducing you. It changes what VA has to prove. And the flip side is written into the same regulation: for ratings in effect less than five years, on conditions considered likely to improve, VA can reduce based on a single re-examination showing improvement. That is the practical reason newer ratings are more vulnerable.

The 10-Year Rule: Protection of Service Connection

What it protects: the service connection itself. Not the percentage.

Under 38 U.S.C. § 1159 and 38 C.F.R. § 3.957, once service connection for a condition has been in effect for 10 years or more, VA cannot sever it except on a showing of fraud, or a showing that you did not have the required service or character of discharge.

This is the rule veterans most often misunderstand, and the misunderstanding cuts in a painful direction. Veterans hear “10-year rule” and believe their rating is locked. It is not. VA can still reduce the percentage on a 10-year protected condition, in some cases all the way to 0%. What VA cannot do is declare the condition unrelated to your service.

That distinction is worth more than it sounds. A condition that stays service-connected, even at 0%, remains a live part of your record. You can seek an increase later if it worsens. You can claim secondary conditions that flow from it. The door stays open. Severance closes it.

The 20-Year Rule: Protected Ratings

What it protects: a floor under your percentage.

Under 38 C.F.R. § 3.951(b), a disability that has been continuously rated at or above a given percentage for 20 years or more cannot be reduced below that percentage except upon a showing that the rating was based on fraud.

Two details matter here, and both get lost in the shorthand.

“At or above” sets the floor at the lowest level you held. If your rating went 50%, then dropped to 30%, then went back to 50% across those two decades, your protected floor is 30%, not 50%. You were continuously rated at or above 30% the whole time. You were not continuously at 50%.

Fraud is the stated exception. The regulation is narrow on this point. Fraud is a serious finding with its own evidentiary requirements, not a label VA applies casually.

This protection also reaches a total rating based on individual unemployability. TDIU held continuously for 20 years falls under the same regulation.

The Detail That Decides Everything: When the Clock Starts

Every one of these rules turns on a date, and the date is not the one on your decision letter.

The clock runs from the effective date of the rating or the grant of service connection, to the date the reduction or severance would take effect. Effective dates commonly run months, and sometimes years, earlier than the decision that announced them, because they typically reach back to when the claim was filed.

I have seen the gap between those two dates decide whether a protection applies. If you are looking at a proposed reduction, pull the decision that established the rating and find the effective date. Then count from there. You may be further along than you think.

What These Rules Do Not Do

They do not make you exempt from re-examination. VA can schedule you. Missing a scheduled examination without good cause creates its own problems, separate from any of this.

They do not stop an increase. These rules run in one direction. Nothing here prevents you from filing for a higher rating.

They are not the same as permanent and total. P&T is a distinct finding about your disability picture, and it carries its own benefits, including certain benefits for dependents. A long-held protected rating and a P&T finding are different things, and you can have one without the other.

They do not all run on the same disability. Each condition has its own effective date and its own clock. A veteran can have one condition protected at 20 years and another rated last year with no protection at all.

One more point worth naming plainly: reduction is not the only mechanism VA has for revisiting an award. Revision for clear and unmistakable error is a separate process with its own rules. If you receive something that reads like VA is reopening an old decision rather than proposing a reduction, that is a different animal and it deserves a closer look.

If You Get a Proposed Reduction Notice

A proposed reduction is not a completed reduction. VA has to follow a specific procedure under 38 C.F.R. § 3.105(e), and that procedure gives you a window to act.

Read the date on the notice. You generally have 60 days to submit evidence showing the reduction is not warranted, and 30 days to request a predetermination hearing. These are short.
Request the hearing. Requesting it preserves the option. You can decide later how you want to use it.
Get current medical evidence in. The question is whether your condition has actually improved in a sustained way under ordinary conditions of life and work. Treatment records and a statement from your treating provider addressing functional capacity go directly to that question.
Check the exam VA relied on. If VA is reducing a stabilized rating based on one brief examination that is less thorough than the exam that established the rating, that is a problem with the reduction itself.
Check the procedure. VA’s compliance with the notice and timing requirements is not a formality. Procedural defects in a reduction are a recurring issue, and they matter.

The Short Version

Five years raises the standard of proof VA must meet. Ten years protects the service connection but not the percentage. Twenty years sets a floor under the percentage, at the lowest level you continuously held. All three run from effective dates, not letter dates. And all three have exceptions.

None of this means a proposed reduction is a foregone conclusion. Reductions get proposed on evidence that does not support them more often than it should, and the rules above are only part of what governs whether one survives review.

If you have received a proposed reduction notice, or you are trying to work out whether one of these protections applies to your situation, that is a question worth getting a clear answer on rather than guessing at.

Bryan R. Blackmore is a veterans law attorney and former Attorney at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. He served 24 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, including deployment to Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Mr. Blackmore is licensed in California and Virginia and represents veterans through Blackmore Veterans Law, P.C.