ARE DISABILITY DECISIONS MADE HERE IN HUNTSVILLE?

If you apply for Social Security disability benefits, you will initially deal with the Social Security field office that serves the county in which you reside.  For Madison County, that is the Huntsville office.  For Limestone, Morgan or Lawrence counties, that will be the Decatur Social Security Office.

However, decisions on disability applications are not made by the local office.  Once the local Social Security office accumulates the proper forms, the application will be sent to a state agency known as the Disability Determination Service (DDS) in Birmingham.

The DDS will order your medical records and evaluate your claim to see whether you meet the requirements to receive SSDI or SSI benefits.  In addition to medical records, the DDS will examine the work you have performed during the most recent 15 year period.  They must determine whether you can (a) continue to perform any of your past relevant work, or (b) perform any other work which exists in the national economy.

The vast majority of claims are denied because the DDS will find that the claimant can perform some type of job that exists in large numbers in the United States economy.  This may not be any type of job the claimant has done in the past.  In the profession, we call this a Step 5 Denial--because it is made at the fifth and last step in the consideration process.

If benefits are denied by the Disability Determination Service, the claimant is left with one recourse:  to file an appeal and ask for a hearing before an administrative law judge.  Your case will then move to a hearing office (called ODAR for Office of Disability Adjudication and Review).  There are two ODAR offices serving North Alabama--one in Florence and one in Franklin, TN.

It typically takes about 15 months to get a hearing scheduled.  At the hearing, an administrative law judge (ALJ) will consider all the evidence, including any new evidence, and give a new decision.  The ALJ may give a fully favorable decision, partially favorable decision or an unfavorable decision (denial). 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GETTING MONEY FROM SSDI

SSDI stands for Social Security Disability Insurance .  When you first began working, the Government deducted a percentage of your wages, called a FICA tax.  This continued as long as you worked, in most cases.  This money was matched by your employer and set aside in a government trust fund to help you if you later became disabled and could not work. SSDI is a type of government sponsored insurance program, usually called "Social Security disability insurance."  To get benefits out of SSDI, you must prove  that you have a medical disability so severe that you cannot work any full-time job; that this disability has lasted, or is expected to last, for at least 12 consecutive months. That sounds simple but Social Security has made it rather difficult to prove that you are disabled.  One reason is that their definition of 'disability' is so strict.  You usually must prove that you cannot perform even simple, unskilled work at the sedentary (sitting) leve
Read more

POST HEARING EVIDENCE

Many people assume that a Social Security disability case is over when the hearing has been held.  This isn't always the case.  Often there is post hearing work that should be done to achieve the best chance of a favorable decision. Everyone at a disability hearing works under pressure.  This includes the claimant, the representative, the vocational expert and even the administrative law judge.  Hearings are generally limited to less than one hour.  The judge will ask questions that place the claimant under stress to answer correctly.  The representative or attorney will be asked to respond to procedural issues or points of law that place him or her under pressure.  The judge must constantly conduct the hearing so that it follows Social Security laws, rules and regulations.  Further, the judge must form accurate hypothetical questions for the vocational expert based on the medical and vocational evidence in the file and upon the claimant's testimony.  The vocational expert th
Read more

PARTIALLY FAVORABLE DECISIONS ON DISABILITY

You attended a hearing on your Social Security disability claim.  A few weeks later, you receive a Notice of Decision in the mail that says you have received a Partially Favorable decision.  Does this mean that you are only partially disabled, not fully disabled? ANSWER:  No.  Social Security does not make awards for partial disability.  You are either disabled or not disabled.  There is no such category as "partially disabled" within Social Security law. A "partially favorable" decision means that the administrative law judge has found you to be disabled.  However, he or she has changed some material fact in your application.  Most often, this change involves the established onset date--the date you were found to have become disabled.  For example, in your application you may have alleged that you became disabled on June 1, 2012.  After reviewing the facts of the case, the judge may have decided that you did not become disabled until September 1, 2012.  Theref
Read more