Natalia Jofre: Hello, and welcome to Hill & Ponton Social Security Disability blog. I’m Natalia Jofre, Social Security Section Director here at our firm.
Shelly Mark: And I am Shelly Mark, I am the Senior Social Security Attorney here.
Natalia Jofre: So, we’re talking about workers’ comp and how that affects or not Social Security Disability benefits and what it requires. And one of the things that Social Security requires when you apply for their benefits, first of all they’re going to ask you are you receiving any workers’ comp benefits, have you received any workers’ comp benefits, do you expect to apply for benefits?
Natalia Jofre: You need to obviously answer those questions truthfully, and then if you are or if you have, and normally they look at a period of 10 years, then they’re going to ask you for that actual information, and that can be workers’ comp settlement papers. Yeah, if you’re currently getting benefits, your pay stubs, your weekly payout sheets they call them. They can get those from like your insurance company or your attorney, what not. But they’re going to ask you for your information regarding your workers’ comp benefits.
Natalia Jofre: And what we have seen is that many times people are reluctant to do that.
Shelly Mark: That’s correct. For some reason, people are very reluctant to provide us or Social Security with their settlement paperwork for their workers’ comp claim, but the reality is if Social Security doesn’t have that paperwork to see what the settlement or the benefit amount was, even if the client is approved for benefits, they’re not going to get any type of payment.
Natalia Jofre: Whatsoever, so there’s a two-fold problem with that, okay? Sometimes the claimants feel like, oh, if I don’t provide it, then they don’t have any ammunition to use against me, and that’s not true because they’re not going to pay you unless they get that information. Other times they’ll say, well, they can get that from my attorney or they can get that from the insurance company, and the problem with that is that none of those people are in a hurry to-
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: Give Social Security the information that they need, and Social Security’s not going to give them anything without your consent.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: And so what will end up happening is that if you’re at the initial level and you’re applying for benefits, it’s going to greatly delay the application of your claim or the processing of the application, and if that happens, guess who is bum out of luck?
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: It’s the client.
Shelly Mark: Yeah.
Natalia Jofre: I mean, the only that’s going to be hurt by any kind of delay in the processing of your claim is you. The other side of that is people will say, well, if I delay or whatever, you know, then maybe they won’t find out what I’m actually getting.
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: If they don’t and it’s at the end of the case, they’re not going to pay you a single dollar in benefits until they get that information. So once again, the only one being hurt by that and the only one being hurt by the delays is you. So the best thing to do is actually get the information yourself and submit it as quickly as possible. Once your application can be processed-
Shelly Mark: Right.
Natalia Jofre: Right at the claim for you to be able to get paid quickly and accurately.
Shelly Mark: Right. The last thing that you want is a delay due to not having the appropriate paperwork that you could easily obtain. Really it’s easier, and like Natalia said, just to do it yourself. You’ll save a lot of time and a lot of unreasonable delay, you know, on Social Security’s part.
Natalia Jofre: And if the information is incomplete, that can hurt you too. We’ve seen incorrect offsets applied and so you want to make sure that you’re giving them all of the information that they require.
Shelly Mark: And Natalia just mentioned the offset, and so maybe that would be a good topic for us to talk about in the future.
Natalia Jofre: Yeah, we’ll definitely be talking about that. We’re going to get into a lot more of the technicalities, so be sure to stay in tune for those.
Shelly Mark: Thank you.
Natalia Jofre: Thanks.
