hi everyone and welcome to a cck live under five my name is christian mctarnigan and today
i'm going to be talking about va's five-year disability rule so va has a rule that affords
veterans protections after they've been rated at the same exact disability rating for five years so
if you have a 30 rating for your post traumatic stress disorder for five years or more
this should apply to you so this is intended to protect veterans from unfair reductions and
disability benefits because after five years va considers your rating stabilized which
means it shouldn't fluctuate up and down it should be kind of the same from then on
so rating reduction just like it sounds it's when va is going to try to reduce your rating because
in their view you've gotten better your disability has become less severe so something important to
keep in mind is that for all reading reductions five years or otherwise va is supposed to show
that your condition has gotten better under the ordinary conditions of daily life and work but
what's special about the five years having that same disability level for five years or more
is that there are other things that va is supposed to do before they reduce you um and so i'm going
to go through sort of the three important things to know about the five-year rule that can be found
in 38 cfr section 3.344 if you care to look it up on the web right so once your disability has
been the same for five years the va shouldn't reduce you on the basis of a single examination
they need to make sure that it wasn't a temporary improvement right you go to an exam maybe you're
feeling good that day but va is supposed to look at at least two so more than one to make sure it
just wasn't a temporary improvement before they reduce your rating the va is also supposed to
look at your entire file to determine whether the examination is full and complete and also
the third sort of special feature of 3.344 is that va is not supposed to reduce a veteran based on
an examination that is less full and complete than the examination that was used to grant the benefit
so despite va having a look at this law va will still propose and reduce some veterans disability
rating so what's going to happen then if va determines a rating reduction may be warranted
they first have to tell you and they have to issue a proposed notice of reduction
now the proposal doesn't mean that you've been reduced it's just that va is proposing to reduce
you once you get that notice of proposed reduction you have 30 days to request a hearing the hearing
will happen within the 30 days but you got to request it within 30 days and it will happen
you know once the a gets around to it and then you have 60 days to submit evidence after the proposal
basically you know trying to show that you should be reduced so um after the proposed reduction
and if you have a hearing after your hearing after va considers the evidence that you submit if you
have it if va still thinks that the reduction is necessary they will issue a rating decision
that actually reduces your benefits so it it's important to stop here for a second because i want
to make uh i want to make something really clear if you want to disagree you have to disagree with
or file a supplemental claim higher level review notice of disagreement with the actual reduction
not the proposed reduction because it's the actual reduction that reduces your benefits that's going
to give you some propelled rights or like i said filing a supplemental claim so it's important to
know these rules because if va doesn't follow them um you know you might have a valid appeal and va
has to follow these rules or supposed to follow these rules really closely when reducing a rating
or else you know you might be able to get your rating back
if your appeal is successful so this is meant to be short that's all i have for you today thank
you much for thank you very much for tuning in as always more information on the topics that
we've been talking about today can be found on our blog and then some other videos and don't forget
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