VA disability and survivor checks rose 1.3% for 2021

If you get VA disability compensation, your monthly payment went up 1.3% on December 1, 2020. Social Security got the same raise that year. Allowances for dependents went up too, and so did the yearly clothing allowance for veterans whose prosthetics or skin medicines damage their clothes. Surviving spouses and children who get Dependency and Indemnity Compensation got the raise as well.

You didn’t have to apply. VA put the new rates into effect on its own. A veteran rated 100% disabled with no dependents got $3,146.42 a month, and one rated 10% got $144.14. VA pays for each month at the start of the next month, so the first larger payment covered December 2020.

Unlike Social Security, VA payments don’t rise automatically. Congress has to pass a law every year to raise them. Without this law, rates would have stayed where they were while prices kept going up. Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia introduced the bill with Republican Rep. Mike Bost. The House passed it unanimously by voice vote in May 2020, and the Senate passed it by unanimous consent that September. President Donald Trump signed it on October 20, 2020.