| Natalia Jofre: | Welcome to the Hill & Ponton Social Security Disability blog. I’m Natalia Jofre, the director for our Social Security section. |
| Shelly Mark: | And I’m Shelly Mark. I’m the senior Social Security attorney here. |
| Natalia Jofre: | So, today we’re going to continue to talk about the sequential evaluation process, which is the process Social Security looks at to determine if a person’s disabled. And we’re going to talk about probably one of the most important issues when it comes to proving that you’re disabled. And that’s age. |
| Shelly Mark: | That’s correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Because age is going to determine how they’re going to evaluate the rest of your claim. People feel sometimes it’s as though age is biased, and age … How can they do this. This is the actual system. I mean, depending on how old you are, is how they’re going to evaluate your claim and find whether you can be found disabled or not. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | So, you want to go over the categories? |
| Shelly Mark: | Sure. Well, there are younger individuals closely approaching advanced age, advanced age, and then closely approaching retirement. The first category of younger individuals is the most difficult to prove. The theory there, I believe from Social Security, is that if you’re under 50 years old, you may not be able to perform your past work, but that you have plenty of time to be retrained into some other type of work that can accommodate what the disabilities are. |
| Natalia Jofre: | And that age group is 18-49. |
| Shelly Mark: | That is correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | So that’s a huge scope. I mean, think about that. They’re evaluating an 18-year old the same exact way they’re evaluating a 49-year old. |
| Shelly Mark: | That’s correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | On paper. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Now, that’s where sometimes … Not sometimes, but where you come in and you’ll basically explain in reality and the real world … |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. That people can still be disabled even though they’re not 50-years old. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Right. |
| Shelly Mark: | A lot of instances may be that someone was in a car accident or had a traumatic injury of some kind, and they were not able to go back to work. Or that they’re still not able to go back to work. And we can ask Social Security to pay them for either the time they were off of work, or for the time they were off of work, plus ongoing with some kind of review in the future. |
| Another way these claims can be proved is if the client meets a listing. Remember, at Step Three, if the client meets a listing, then we don’t go any further in the process. So we never need to talk about age at all. | |
| Natalia Jofre: | Okay, so if they meet the listing, age basically becomes irrelevant. |
| Shelly Mark: | Exactly. |
| Natalia Jofre: | So once again, this is where you come in and now, just because a person meets a listing, doesn’t mean they’re always going to be approved. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right, that’s correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | We come back to what should happen and what actually happens. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Most younger individuals are denied the first and second time. |
| Shelly Mark: | Definitely. And usually, if someone is found to meet a listing, it’s established at the hearing through medical expert testimony. So in a lot of those cases, unless they’ll very severe, they will have to go all the way to a hearing. |
| Natalia Jofre: | So their case is going to take a lot longer. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. That’s correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Really briefly, on average, three to five months to get a decision at the initial level. Three to five months to get a decision at the reconsideration level, 18 to 24 months, really it’s taking 24 months to get a hearing date. So a younger individual, anyone basically under age 49, or 49 and younger, is going to be looking a good two to three years for their claim to be resolved. |
| Shelly Mark: | That is correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | But, it can be winnable. |
| Shelly Mark: | Absolutely. |
| Natalia Jofre: | It’s not like you’re going to be written off. |
| Shelly Mark: | No, and no matter what age, we can always prove that a person has what we refer to as a “less than sedentary” residual functional capacity. That’s technical sounding. All that means is that an individual cannot work 40 hours a week. That they are unable to sustain competitive employment. And that is the test for Social Security, is whether an individual can sustain competitive employment. So Social Security can’t come back and say, “You can do part-time, or 30 hours a week,” or anything like that. The legal test is 40 hours a week. |
| So there are a few different avenues where we can have a claim approved for younger individuals. It just takes a little longer and it’s a little more difficult. | |
| Natalia Jofre: | Okay. Well, we’re going to be talking about the other age groups in some of our future blogs. So be sure to watch those if you don’t feel like being the younger individual applied to you. And we’ll get into the breakdown of how those claims are basically proven and all of that good stuff. So thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you next time. And if you have any questions, feel free to call our office, or visit our website. Thank you. |
| Shelly Mark: | Thank you. |
Video Blog – SS Sequential Eval – Step 5 – Younger Individuals
