| Natalia Jofre: | Welcome to the Social Security Disability Blog. I am Natalia Jofre. I’m the Social Security Director for Hill & Ponton. |
| Shelly Mark: | I’m Shelly Mark. I am the Senior Social Security Attorney with the firm. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Today we’re going to be talking a little bit more about age, how that affects your disability claim, how it’s evaluated. We had talked about the sequential evaluation process, which is basically how Social Security figures out whether you’re disabled or not. Then we talked a little bit about how age affects your case, and depending on how old you are how your claim is evaluated. The last video we did we talked about younger individuals, which are people that are between 18 and 49. |
| Shelly Mark: | Correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | And how their claim is evaluated. The next age level is closely approaching advanced age, right? |
| Shelly Mark: | Yeah. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Which is 50 to 54. |
| Shelly Mark: | That’s correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: | They’re in a gray area. |
| Shelly Mark: | Yeah. |
| Natalia Jofre: | You’re going to talk a little bit more about how that’s … |
| Shelly Mark: | Sure. Okay, so as Natalia said, the closely approaching advanced age is for individuals who are 50 to 54 years old, and the evaluation is going to loo at whether they can perform their past work, and then the second step, of course, is going to to be whether they can perform other work. Whether they can perform other work is going to be an application. It’s going to depend on what type of work they performed in the past, what type of physical exertion was required, what type of mental exertion was required. And then from there, what types of skills they acquired from their past work that they could readily move and transfer that into other areas. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Let’s talk first about physical exertion. |
| Shelly Mark: | Okay. |
| Natalia Jofre: | You’re talking about standing, walking, sitting. How long? |
| Shelly Mark: | Exactly, or if it’s a position that requires a lot of heavy lifting. Social security has statutes that come into play when a person is 50. Then they change again when a person is 55, which we’ll go over in another video, but in certain situations with individuals in this group if they cannot perform their past work, and due to the exertion level they can’t perform their past work, and they don’t have transferable skills they should be considered disabled. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Okay. |
| Shelly Mark: | It gets a little bit more in depth as to all the factors that go in, but it is a gray area. Some people may not be able to perform their past work, and they may be disabled. Some people may not be able to perform their past work but they may find that they do have some transferable skills and that they’re not disabled. Like you said this is definitely a gray area. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Two things real quick. Mental exertion, basically like memory, concentration. |
| Shelly Mark: | Yeah, absolutely. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Okay. |
| Shelly Mark: | Memory, concentration, whether or not a person’s going to have some difficulty interacting with people, interacting with supervisors, whether or not they’re going to be off task due to pain, side effects of medication. Any of those things will be considered. It’s an evaluation of the physical difficulties with work and then also nonexertional, so the things that you and I were just talking about. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Can you give an example of just a case that you can think of where the person basically either had transferable skills? Like what kind of work are we talking about? |
| Shelly Mark: | The easiest example for this age group would be probably a construction worker, who in the past 15 years that’s all that he’s done, very physical work, lifting 50 pounds a day, standing and walking constantly. Let’s say that there was an injury and they can hardly walk on their own, maybe they’re using a cane. They cannot go back to doing construction work. If they were limited to sedentary work, which would just be desk work, that person would be disabled based on Social Security statutes, because Social Security would find that there is such a leap from being a construction worker to being a receptionist, that even though the person’s not 55 yet it would be too difficult to retrain them. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Okay. That’s where you sort of get into some of the nitty-gritty where were you doing real construction work. Were you out there laying brick, mortar, that? Or, were you basically the guy behind the desk that was just writing up the work orders, and saying I’m going to send out a crew. You need to be here this day this time, but you’re never really really … |
| Shelly Mark: | That’s true. Yes. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Right. That’s where they’re looking at exertion levels, and they do get into those details. |
| Shelly Mark: | It’s very very detail oriented process and the thing that we had talked about I think in an earlier video is it’s crucial to how your work is classified with Social Security. I think we’re going to discuss that a little more in depth later, but if there’s a misclassification, and in the example that you just gave, let’s say that that individual was classified as being a supervisor, but just a completely sedentary supervising position. Usually, in the construction industry a supervisor is a working supervisor, so usually if there is someone out that day they’re going to have to do the work that their crew has to do. We need to be really really careful when we’re completing the work history forms. |
| Natalia Jofre: | That is going to be a whole other topic, and it’s a hot topic because we see this all the time. |
| Shelly Mark: | All the time |
| Natalia Jofre: | Where people feel like they want to be boastful, or they think that they’re writing a resume. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | And so they’re like, oh I was a supervisor. Yeah, but you also had to do the work. |
| Shelly Mark: | Right. |
| Natalia Jofre: | That’s actually going to help your case more. |
| Shelly Mark: | Absolutely. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Yeah. |
| Shelly Mark: | It can be a mistake that can cost you from being approved at the initial in the reconsideration to having to wait the 18 to 24 months to clarify it for a judge. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Wow. |
| Shelly Mark: | So it’s a big deal. |
| Natalia Jofre: | Yeah. Next blog we’ll talk about the next age group, which is advanced age. What that takes, what you need to prove for that. For now, thanks for watching. If you have any questions feel free to visit our website or call our office. Thanks for being with us. |
| Shelly Mark: | Thank you. |
Video Blog – SS Sequential Eval – Step 5 – Approaching Advanced Age
