- Hello and welcome to the Hill & Ponton
Social Security Disability blog.
I'm Natalia Jofre, the Social Security Section Director.
- I'm Shelly Mark.
I'm the senior Social Security attorney.
- In our last blog we talked about,
after you go to the hearing, what happens
when you get that decision?
When you get the actual decision
it can be a fully favorable decision,
a partially favorable decision, or an unfavorable decision.
- That's correct.
- First thing's first, let's talk about
a fully favorable decision, which will mean you've won.
Great news, what happens?
- Everybody says, what does it mean?
(laughing)
What does it mean?
Basically, a fully favorable decision is exactly
what it sounds like.
It means that the judge is agreeing
with the fact that you're disabled
and the judge is agreeing on when you became disabled.
You basically have been awarded your disability benefits
since you alleged you originally became disabled.
- Like we said before, you have to check that
to make sure that they got the actual date right.
We've seen discrepancies many times
in the past, unfortunately.
If it says fully favorable, then it's going to take
probably a good 90 days before they see
their past due benefits.
- Probably so.
- Right.
Once they win it's going to either go to the local office,
so if it's SSI only, it's gonna go to the local office
and the local office is going to basically calculate,
okay, how much can you get in retroactive benefits
or in monthly benefits and in monthly benefits.
If it's dib only, which is regular disability only,
it's going to go to an out-of-state payment center
and depending on what your social security number is
is where it's gonna go, depending on your age,
depending on several factors,
if it's widows, if it's regular, it it's, yeah.
Then they're gonna determine what
your past due benefits are, what your monthly check will be.
Normally your monthly check's gonna start
within about 60 days from the favorable decision.
Your retroactive benefits are gonna normally
come within about 90 days.
Where it gets a little dicey is
when it's for regular disability and SSI combined.
- It tends to take longer because you have two payment,
especially if they split it it seems.
If they split and send part of it to
the disability processing and the other to local a office,
it seems like it does take a bit longer.
It seems to me the SSI side of things may hold up
disability a little bit. - It does.
The actual out-of-state payment center
can't pay you anything until your file is cleared
at the local office.
Well, image with Social Security's backlog
that can sometimes take months before they even get to it.
This is even if you're not owed anything.
Even if you say, you know what,
I'm gonna waive right to SSI, I don't want any SSI,
I just want to get my regular check,
they still need to wait for the local person
to basically sign off on that, say it,
and forward it to the payment center out of state.
- That's one of the reasons when we know that we get
a technical SSI denial, we don't appeal that.
- Right.
- That way, we don't have to have the client
end up waiting on that at the end.
By that I just mean earlier in the claim
we tend to file both an SSI and a disability application
for our clients at the beginning
and then if there is an SSI denial due to over-income,
we call that a technical denial.
We do not appeal that because we know that person's
not eligible and it prevents them from ending up
with that situation at the end.
- What's really important though in that situation
is you want to make sure that there's
been no change in income.
You know with SSI it's month to month.
- True.
- Just because you didn't qualify technically
based on your income a year ago,
maybe the same doesn't hold true anymore,
maybe there's been a change in your income,
maybe your spouse lost their job.
- Or divorced.
- Whoever was helping you, exactly.
Maybe you got divorced.
You want to always make sure that's the case
before you waive any rights.
Another important thing that tends to come out
in the decision is if you're gonna be reviewed.
- Definitely.
- Right? Because it's not...
- That's the last sentence.
- Yes.
- Very last sentence of the decision
and it gets overlooked a lot.
In a lot of cases, especially for younger individuals,
the judge is going to say that in 24, 36 months
we're gonna pull this file to review it
to see if you've have any medical improvement.
- People ask us all the time, is this for life, is this?
We're gonna talk about that in a future blog,
reviews, how often do they happen, do they always happen,
why do they happen, what you have to have ready
because that is a very extensive subject in of itself.
Just know that sometimes in the fully favorable decision
they'll actually tell you this is how soon
we're gonna be reviewing you.
- Absolutely and you can almost expect it
if you're a younger individual
because Social Security is very reluctant to say
that you're permanently disabled at, say, 35 or something.
- All right, we'll talk more about decisions
in our next blog.
For now, we thank you for joining us.
If you have any questions in the meantime,
please feel free to visit our website or give us a call.
- Thank you.
(relaxing music)