Natalia Jofre: Hello, and welcome to the Hill and Ponton Social Security Disability Blog, I’m Natalia Jofre, the Social Security Section Director.
Shelly Mark: And I’m Shelly Mark. I’m the Senior Social Security Attorney.
Natalia Jofre: So in our last blog we talked about after you go to the hearing, what happens.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: When you get that decision. So when you get the actual decision, it can be a fully favorable decision, a partially favorable decision, or an unfavorable decision.
Shelly Mark: That’s correct.
Natalia Jofre: So first things first, let’s talk about a fully favorable decision, which will mean you’ve won.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: Great news.
Shelly Mark: Yes.
Natalia Jofre: What happens.
Shelly Mark: Everybody says, “What does it mean?” 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.
Natalia Jofre: Okay.
Shelly Mark: So, you basically have been awarded your disability benefits since you alleged you originally became disabled.
Natalia Jofre: Right. And so that’s what one, like we said before you have to check that to make sure that they got the actual date right.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: We’ve seen discrepancies.
Shelly Mark: Oh, yeah.
Natalia Jofre: Many times in the past, unfortunately. And so if it says fully favorable, then it’s going to take probably a good 90 days before they see their past due benefits?
Shelly Mark: Yeah, probably so.
Natalia Jofre: Right. So once they win, it’s going to either go to the local office, so if it’s SSI only, it’s going to go to the local office. And the local office is going to basically calculate, okay, how much can you get in retroactive benefits.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: Or in monthly benefits. And in monthly benefits. If it’s dib only, which is regular disability only.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: 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 going to do, depending on your age, depending, depending on several factors, if it’s widows, if it’s regular.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: If it’s, yeah. And then they’re going to determine what your past due benefits are, and what your monthly check will be. Normally, your monthly check’s going to start within about 60 days from the favorable decision. Your retroactive benefits are going to normally come within about 90 days. Where it gets a little dicey, is when it’s for regular disability and SSI combined.
Shelly Mark: Right. Yeah. It tends to take longer because you have two payment, especially if they split it it seems.
Natalia Jofre: Yeah.
Shelly Mark: If they split it and send part of it to the disability processing and the other to the local office, it seems like it does take a bit longer. I think it seems to me like the SSI side of things may hold up-
Natalia Jofre: It does.
Shelly Mark: -the disability a little bit.
Natalia Jofre: Yeah. Like they, the actual out of state payment center, can’t pay you anything until your file is cleared at the local office. Well, imagine with social security’s backlog, that can sometimes take months before they even get to it and this is even if you’re not owed anything. Even if you say, “You know what, I’m going to waive my 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.
Shelly Mark: And that’s one of the reasons right when we know that we get a technical SSI denial, we don’t appeal that.
Natalia Jofre: Right.
Shelly Mark: That way that we don’t have to have the client wind up waiting on that at the end. And by that, I just mean earlier in the claim-
Natalia Jofre: Yes.
Shelly Mark: -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.
Natalia Jofre: What’s really important though in that situation is you want to make sure that there’s been no change in income. So you know with SSI, it’s month to month.
Shelly Mark: True.
Natalia Jofre: So, 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.
Shelly Mark: Yeah.
Natalia Jofre: Maybe your spouse lost their job.
Shelly Mark: Or divorced.
Natalia Jofre: Or maybe whoever was helping you, exactly, maybe you got divorced. So you want to always make sure that that’s the case before you waive any rights.
Shelly Mark: Right. For sure.
Natalia Jofre: Another important thing that tends to come out in the decision, is if you’re going to be reviewed.
Shelly Mark: Definitely.
Natalia Jofre: Right, because it’s not-
Shelly Mark: That’s the last sentence.
Natalia Jofre: Yes.
Shelly Mark: The very last sentence of the decision, and it gets overlooked a lot. But in a lot of cases, especially for younger individuals, the judge is going to say that in 24, 26 months, we’re going to pull this file to review it to see if you’ve had any medical improvement.
Natalia Jofre: Yeah. So people ask us all the time, is this for life?
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: We’re going to talk about that in a future blog, you know, 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.
Shelly Mark: Sure. Yeah.
Natalia Jofre: But just know that sometimes in the fully favorable decision, they’ll actually tell you, this is how soon we’re going to be reviewing you.
Shelly Mark: Right, yeah, 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.
Natalia Jofre: Yeah. All right. So we’ll talk more about the decision 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.
Shelly Mark: Thank you.
