Your reading, guides, and worksheets in one place. Start with a guide, then choose the tools you need.
Protecting Your Rating From Reduction explains the five-year, ten-year, twenty-year, and total-rating protections in eight steps, then builds the habits that defend them: steady treatment, current contact information, attended reexaminations, saved records, and a fast response to any proposal. Education only.
Requesting an Increased Rating for a Worsening Condition walks you through ten steps: document the worsening, read the criteria in 38 CFR Part 4, file an Intent to File and VA Form 21-526EZ, and prepare for the exam. Education only.
Responding to a Proposed Reduction walks you through twelve steps after VA proposes a cut: mark the 30-day hearing and 60-day evidence deadlines, match your rating to its protection rules, gather records, decide on the hearing, and submit early. Education only.
Three versions of the same buddy statement: weak, strong and harmful. Includes a two-page fillable handout your witness can complete, sign and hand back, plus a checklist to run before you submit.
Five, ten and twenty years each protect something different. Explains rating reduction protections, the 30-day hearing and 60-day evidence windows, with a fillable rating inventory.
Your back is measured on one day. This log puts your bad days into the file. Covers the spine flexion bands and the painful-on-use rule, with a fillable flare log.
Five review lanes, and two of them cannot see new evidence. Sorts supplemental claim, Higher-Level Review and the three Board dockets, with a fillable sorting worksheet and one-year deadline check.
For a mental health C&P exam. Shows how a good morning can hide a hard year, and gives a two-week symptom log to fill in before the exam.
Why 50, 30 and 20 make 70, not 100. Walks through VA's combined ratings math, the bilateral factor and rounding mistakes, then gives a fillable worksheet to check your own decision letter.
TDIU is a different door, not a rating you climb to. Explains the percentage rules, marginal employment and the Census threshold, then gives a fillable job-by-job work history record.
Help from an accredited Veterans Service Officer is always free. Find one at va.gov/get-help-from-accredited-representative.
Want a short email when VA rates change each December, when a big rule changes, or when a new guide comes out? Get rate-change emails. It's optional.