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SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY
APPEALS PROCESS
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Other Questions Related To Social Security Disability Denials.
Can You Get The Benefits If They Are Stopped During The Appeal?
Yes. You have to file a form within the timeframe provided on your notice, which is thirty days generally that your benefits are being ceased. You have to advise that you are appealing that decision and that you want your benefits to continue while the review is going on. That review is generally called a cessation review. However, you do need to be aware that if you do this and continue to get your benefits and ultimately you are found not to be disabled during that period after they ceased your benefits, you will have to repay those benefits to the social security administration.
What Can You Do If You Are Denied All Four Times?
You can reapply. You basically have to start the process all over again. There is an option to go to the Supreme Court to appeal. It is a fairly lengthy and expensive process.
Is There Anything That Can Be Done If You Start From Scratch To Better Your Odds?
First of all, it is very important to get an attorney at the beginning of your case. A lot of people like to wait till the end, which is one of the reasons for the disparity between the reconsideration level of eleven percent approval and the hearing level at sixty to seventy percent approval. An attorney that practices in this area and does for at least the large part of their practice knows what the social security administration is looking for.
The attorney can get the information generally from the doctors that they need. The doctors write their medical records from a medical perspective as they should, because that is what they are using them for. However, the social security administration does have a specific set of rules and you basically have to fall into and those rules have to be met from the medical records. Most medical providers do not know what social security is looking for and social security is not telling them; they are just saying, “Provide me the records”. So if you have an attorney at the beginning of your appeal, the attorneys have actual forms that are several pages that can be sent to a doctor that specifically goes through the listing or the impairment that person is suffering from. The doctor then checks off boxes; do they meet this, yes or no from a medical standpoint. That form answers all the questions that social security is looking for.
Contacting an attorney at the beginning of your case is important. You are much more likely to get approved instead of having to start all over again. The most important thing would be to hire an experienced attorney from the start. The attorney fee is not any different. The percentage is still the same, whether you hire an attorney at the beginning or at the end of your case, but you are going to get a lot more representation if you do it from the beginning than you will if you hire somebody right before a hearing. Also, you are more likely to get your benefits a little sooner.
Moreover, the attorney fee in that respect would be less, because it is twenty-five percent of past due benefits. If they are able to get your benefits earlier, then their fee is less. If your benefits come at the hearing level and you have already been out of work for three years and they do not get to your case until two months before the hearing, they are still getting twenty-five percent of those three years of benefits. Therefore, you might as well get an attorney early.