How to Apply for Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits

Your first step is to review the “Checklist for Online Adult Disability Application,” which you can find at www.ssa.gov/hlp/radr/10/ovw001-checklist.pdf . Contact all of your doctors’ offices to get specific information about mailing addresses and whether any of your former practitioners have left their practices. In that case, find out who is covering their cases (your case specifically). You will need this information for your application.

Now, read two brochures—

1.       “Disability Planner: How You Apply”-- www.ssa.gov/planners/disability/dapply.html and

2.       “Apply Online for Disability Benefits,” www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10550.pdf

Be aware that this will be a lengthy process. If you “meet a listing” (see more inside the box below), it will still take more than three months and as many as five. If not, especially if you have a combination of disabilities, you may have to appeal online, and then by an in-office Reconsideration (which you can initiate online.) Indeed, you may need to go before an Administrative Law Judge for a hearing. These appeals will extend the length of your case—the ALJ hearing will bring your case to a duration of more than a year, maybe eighteen months or so.

Your “retroactive check” will contain your monthly benefits from your date of application to the month before your monthly benefits will begin to be issued to your bank account (or Direct Express card) through Direct Deposit. The amount of your monthly benefits is determined by your history of earnings.

The application itself is at the www.ssa.gov homepage. You need to select “Apply online for disability benefits.”

If you do have to go to an ALJ hearing, it’s best to be represented. An attorney is best because he or she can shape your case to ensure that “an issue of law” results. Only in this way are you enabled to pursue your case to Federal District Court. (There is an intermediate review, called an Appeals Council appeal, but—generally speaking—the Appeals Council upholds the findings of the ALJ.)

However, you have free choice of who your representative is, and you are free to choose not to be represented at all. (I would counsel against that, though.)

Your representative has to have a fee agreement or petition approved by the Social Security Administration. The ceiling before a District Court hearing that can be charged is $6,000 or 25% of your retroactive check (“past-due benefits,) whichever is less. (However, you also need to pay for copying charges and other out-of-pocket costs that your representative incurred.) If you go to District Court and prevail, another 25% ceiling will work in your favor to keep the fee down.

The criterion that is used to determine whether you are automatically awarded benefits is called “meeting a listing.” Please see: the listing “12.0 Mental Disorders-Adult” www.ssa.gov/disability/professionals/bluebook/12.00-MentalDisorders-Adult.htm This is not light reading, nor pleasant reading. I suggest that you leave it to your representative, and consult the Listing only if you are not represented at the ALJ appeal stage.

Please note that some people receive benefits without “meeting a listing,” but it is much more difficult to make this case.