Winning Social Security disability benefits under age 50
If you are between 18 years old and 50 years old, you are in the most difficult age range to get Social Security benefits.
Before you turn 18, Social Security uses the “child” standard for disability evaluations.
After you turn 18, though, Social Security uses the “adult” standard. You have to show that you are unable to do any type of work which exists in substantial numbers in the national economy. That bit of legalese basically means that you have to show that you can’t do any kind of work anywhere, anyhow so long as it is a …
What does Social Security mean by sedentary, light, medium, and heavy work?
Social Security classifies work into different exertional levels. You might have heard that somebody was denied because he was still able to do “light work.”
Does light work in the Social Security case mean the same thing as light work an a workers’ compensation case?
Or, light work that an employer might give you?
Is anything less than the regular job duties, light work?
Actually, light work is a description of one of the four exertional levels of work (how physically demanding a job is).
Social Security has very specific definitions for all exertional work levels. Let’s take a look at them:
What happens if you have more than one lawyer on a Social Security case
Maybe you have moved out of state and had to get a new lawyer on your Social Security disability case. Maybe you fired your lawyer. Maybe your lawyer fired you. But now, you have to find a new lawyer!
What is going to happen to the attorney fees?
Do I have to pay both lawyers?
There are two things that can happen:
Reviewing your Social Security exhibit file – Part 3 work history
Now that I know the critical dates and the medical history I review the work history. Social Security reviews cases using the 5 step sequential evaluation process. At step 4, if you are still able to do any of the jobs you performed in the last 15 years before you became disabled, you can be denied benefits. There are a couple more wrinkles to this, such as the job has to be a substantial gainful activity, but the general idea is that if you can still do a …
You can’t get Social Security disabilty benefits if you do not apply
To quote an old lottery slogan, “you can’t win, if you don’t play.” It may seem obvious, but you cannot receive Social Security disability benefits if you do not apply.
If fact, many Social Security regulations about Social Security eligibility start with this simple requirement:
Step 1: You apply.
As I have written about before, Social Security uses the protected filing date (PFD) to decide how …
Reviewing your Social Security exhibit file – Part 2 Critical Dates
What’s the next thing to review in the Social Security exhibit file after the medical records? Check these critical dates: Alleged Onset Date (AOD) & Date Last Insured (DLI)!
The E section usually contains for two documents that provide this information:
“Disability Report – Field Office”
“Disability Report – Appeal”
These reports also tells you whether Social Security thinks there should be a later (or earlier) alleged onset date and Social Security also discussed whether work after the alleged onset …
Do you have to give bad evidence to Social Security on your disability benefit case?
One of my colleagues in the fight to help disabled individuals get their Social Security disability benefits, attorney Johnathon Ginsberg, tackles whether you have to submit unfavorable medical evidence to Social Security.
I see this frequently in cases where there was a workers’ compensation case. “Company doctors” often minimize symptoms and generate records indicating that a claimant has the capacity to return to work. Other times I see unhelpful records in cases where my client just did not “click” with his or her physician or psychiatrist.
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I do not believe that a claimant or a claimants attorney has any obligation to submit unhelpful medical records. This issue periodically comes up on listservs that go to claimants lawyers and the general consensus among most attorneys seems to be that an attorneys obligation is to represent his clients zealously, meaning that there is no affirmative burden for that lawyer to submit unhelpful information. I do know some lawyers, however, who take the opposite position, but it appears to me that they are in the minority.
Even Social Security judges encourage attorneys not to submit every scrap of paper when representing a claimant on a Social Security case. I have attended continuing legal education programs where administrative law judges suggest that attorneys do not submit evidence if it is not relevant.
But there is a crucial difference between not submitting irrelevant evidence, and not submitting unfavorable evidence.
My Social Security file is missing records
Let’s say you are reviewing your Social Security exhibit file before your disability hearing and you discover that some of your doctor’s (or other records) are not there. I have mentioned before that it is not unusual for the medical records in a Social Security file to be a year or more out of date.
What can you do if the records are not complete?
You can ask Social Security to update the records. If you do not have a lawyer Social Security has a higher responsibility to make sure that your hearing is fair, which includes …
