Approved for SSDI

No. The Social Security Administration (SSA) will process your claim and send you your benefits automatically. However, if you have children who were under age 18 (or under age 19 and still in high school) at any time after your date of entitlement, you must submit an application for them to receive benefits. Your own benefits will still be processed automatically.

Generally, it takes one to two months for monthly benefits to begin and back pay to be paid in a Social Security disability case in which a Supplemental Security Income application was not filed. When SSI is involved, it will take considerably longer to get paid.

These are only general rules. In some cases, it takes as long as 3 months for back benefits to be paid. When it takes more than 90 days for back benefits to be paid in a Social Security disability case, it may mean that there has been a bureaucratic mix-up somewhere in the system, and you may need to take action to deal with the back pay.

If it’s been 90 days from the date of the decision and I am still not paid my back benefits, can anything be done to speed up payment?
It is possible that your attorney may be able to do something if you are not paid after 90 days. Be sure to call your attorney to explain that it has been three months and you haven’t been paid. It may be necessary to contact the payment center.

Your benefits should begin with the month of the date of entitlement in your case. This is not the date you were found to be disabled. Disability benefits never begin on the date you were found to be disabled. There is a waiting period of five full calendar months.

Another rule limits the payment of back pay to 12 months before the date of application. Therefore, your benefits will either begin 12 months before the date of application, or five full months after the date you were found to be disabled, whichever is later.

The amount of your first month’s benefits is shown in your Social Security file. However, the Social Security Administration may recalculate your benefit amount before it pays you. If the Social Security Administration recalculates, it may come up with a higher benefit amount. This could happen if all of your earnings were not posted when the original calculation was made. Cost of living increases are also applied each December.

Yes. That notice is usually called a Notice of Award. It will include your date of entitlement, the total amount of benefits to be paid to you, the amount you will be paid in back pay, and the amount of benefits that will be withheld for direct payment of attorney’s fees. It may also give you information about your Medicare eligibility and monthly Medicare premium, as well as information about when to expect a Continuing Disability Review.

The Notice of Award will come around the time that you receive your check for past-due benefits or, if you signed up for it, direct deposit of benefits. The Notice of Award often comes after you receive your past-due benefits.

Direct deposit is very convenient and dependable. You can sign up by contacting your local Social Security office. If you don’t sign up before your disability hearing, it might be too late to have your back pay paid by direct deposit because the Social Security Administration may have already sent out your check for back benefits.

There are a couple of problems with direct deposit of back benefits. Often SSA has you sign up for direct deposit when you apply for benefits. If you forget you signed up, you may be looking for a check in the mail when the money has already been deposited to your bank account. Worse yet, if you close the bank account you told Social Security to use for direct deposits, it may take a while to straighten out. If this happens, go to the Social Security office to update your account information.

There is no problem with cashing the check, but it is best to deposit your check in an interest bearing savings account and wait until you receive the Notice of Award. Your attorney should review the Notice of Award to make sure that attorney’s fees were withheld and that you have not been overpaid. It is also a good idea to make two photocopies of the check before you deposit it. Send one copy of the check to your attorney, and keep the other for your records.

If you are paid too much, the Social Security Administration almost always figures it out eventually. Then, after you have already spent all of the money, it will send you a letter demanding that you repay the overpayment. If you do not have the money to repay the full amount of the overpayment, the Social Security Administration may threaten to cut off your checks until the overpayment is recouped. Usually it will accept a more reasonable reduction of your monthly checks, but this is still a hassle and you may have trouble making ends meet during the time that your check is reduced. Under some circumstances it may be possible to get repayment of all or part of the overpayment waived; but you should not count on this.

Usually regular monthly benefits begin the month after you receive your check for back pay, although occasionally people get a check for regular monthly benefits first. Your check will be sent to arrive on the second, third or fourth Wednesday of the month, depending on which day of the month you were born. Each check will pay benefits for the previous month; for example, the check for January’s benefits will come in February.

Medicare eligibility begins after you have received 24 months of Social Security disability benefits. Keep in mind, to receive Part B of Medicare (which pays for doctor visits), you must pay a premium that will be deducted from your Social Security disability monthly check.

Disabled people with relatively low income and assets may be eligible for other programs that pay for medical expenses not covered by Medicare and/or pay the Medicare premium for you. To find out if you are eligible for any such programs, you need to check with your county welfare department.

If you already have health insurance coverage, you need to figure out how Medicare works with your health insurance. Many health insurance policies state that Medicare is to provide the primary coverage, and your present health insurance will pay what Medicare doesn’t cover. You need to check with your health insurance company when you get your Medicare card.

In a very small number of cases, the Appeals Council in Falls Church, Virginia, will decide on its own to take away benefits awarded by the decision of the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). If it is going to do this, the Appeals Council will almost always send you a notice within 60 days of the date of the judge’s decision. In an extremely small number of cases, the Appeals Council will reverse a decision after the 60 days have run. This is rare, so it is unlikely that the Appeals Council will do this in your case; but if it happens you will have to work with your attorney to deal with it.

No, not very often, but it does happen occasionally.

In addition to their fees, attorneys ask you to repay them for the cost of medical records, medical reports, and other things they paid on your behalf during the case. The Social Security Administration will not take money from your check to pay your attorney expenses.

Yes.

Probably not, but this depends on the amount of your total income. Most people won’t have to pay taxes on their Social Security disability benefits. Couples whose combined incomes exceed $32,000 and individuals with income exceeding $25,000 will pay income tax on a portion of their Social Security disability benefits. The IRS has an odd way of figuring out total income for this rule. The IRS uses adjusted gross income as reported on Form 1040, plus one-half of the total Social Security benefits received for the year, plus non-taxable interest.

Single people with incomes over $34,000 and married people with incomes over $44,000 pay tax on a higher percentage of their Social Security disability benefits.

Here’s an odd thing: People whose Social Security benefits are reduced because of the worker’s compensation offset or offsets for other public disability benefits must count the amount of Social Security benefits not paid when determining taxability of their benefits. But if a child receives benefits on a parent’s account, those benefits count only for determining if the child must pay taxes on Social Security benefits received.

If you fall into the group of people who may be taxed on Social Security disability benefits only because you received a large check for past-due benefits during the year, you still may not have to pay tax on your Social Security benefits. The IRS has set up a way to recalculate your back benefits and consider them received in the year you should have gotten them rather than in the current year. Ask the IRS for a copy of Publication 915.

If your Social Security disability benefits end up being taxable, note that a portion of the attorney’s fee may be deductible. However, this depends on the “2% of adjusted gross income” ceiling on miscellaneous itemized deductions. If you have to repay a long term disability insurance carrier because of receipt of Social Security disability benefits, you may get special tax relief. Ask the IRS for Publication 525.

The Social Security Administration is supposed to send you a Form 1099 by February 1st of the year after your back benefits are paid. If you will have to pay taxes on your Social Security disability benefits, be sure to compare the information on the Form 1099 with the information on your Notice of Award. The Form 1099s from the Social Security Administration is often wrong. You will need to bring any errors to the attention of your tax preparer. For this reason, it is important to keep track of how much you actually receive from the Social Security Administration.

Tax law is very complex. Please talk to a tax specialist if you have any questions about taxes on your Social Security benefits.

The Social Security Administration is required to periodically review the cases of all people receiving disability benefits. Usually cases are reviewed every three years; but some cases are reviewed more often. Sometimes the decision will direct the Social Security Administration to conduct a review at a certain time. Often the Notice of Award will tell you when to expect a review.

For a Continuing Disability Review (CDR), you will be asked to complete a form about your medical treatment, your vocational training or work, and how your condition has changed since the time you were found eligible for disability benefits.

The notice, which you will receive from the Social Security Administration following a Continuing Disability Review (CDR), will explain your appeal rights. Read this notice carefully. Be sure to act quickly. If you appeal within ten days of the date you receive the notice, your benefits will continue during your appeal.

The very best thing you can do is to continue seeing your doctor. A lot of people with long-term chronic medical problems stop seeing their doctors because no treatment seems to help. This is a mistake for two reasons. First, it means that when the Social Security Administration conducts a review, no medical evidence will exist to show that your condition is the same as it was when you were first found disabled. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, doctors recommend that after a certain age, even healthy people need to have a periodic physical examination. This is even more important for people who already have chronic medical problems.

No. Not at all. Very few people have their benefits stopped.

You shouldn’t expect as many problems dealing with the Social Security Administration while receiving benefits as you had trying to get benefits in the first place. Sometimes, though, some people have problems. Here are some things you can do to try to minimize the hassle:

• Create a Social Security folder, and keep all decisions, letters, and notices you receive from SSA in a safe place.
• Read everything you get from the Social Security Administration. The booklets that come with award letters and notices are well written and informative.
• When reading the booklets you receive from the Social Security Administration, pay special attention to the kind of information you are required to report to the Social Security Administration. Report promptly, in writing, and keep a copy with your Social Security papers.
• Don’t necessarily believe everything they tell you at the Social Security Administration 800 number. If you have an important issue to take up with the Social Security Administration, sometimes it is better to go to your local Social Security Office.