DISABILITY SURVIVAL GUIDE: NORTH ALABAMA EDITION

Social Security pays benefits only for total disability.  Since they provide no benefit for partial disability, your benefit will not increase if your condition gets worse.  Once you start getting disability benefits, you are getting all there is. However, an improving medical condition can terminate benefits.  About every 2 to 3 years Social Security will conduct a "Continuing Disability Review" (CDR) to recheck your medical evidence and determine whether you still meet their rules for disability.  If there has been "significant medical improvement," they can terminate benefits for persons who are under full retirement age. Also, disability benefits do not increase when you reach full retirement age.  They simply convert to retirement benefits in the same amount. The truth is, when a claimant is given disability benefits, he/she is actually receiving their retirement benefit, only early.  Thus, at age 66 or 67 (full retirement age), benefits continue but d...

Your odds of winning a $million at the lottery are 1 in 292 million.   Everything in life comes with odds.   Odds with Social Security disability are a lot better, but still risky. If your disability claim is denied at the hearing level, your next step is with the Appeals Council (AC).  That's a group of  appeal judges headquartered just outside Washington, DC at Falls Church, VA. Your odds at the hearing were about 50/50.  At the Appeals Council (AC), the odds are drastically worse.  Here is the average AC case disposition: 2 percent are awarded benefits.   14 percent are remanded (sent back) to the hearing office for a new hearing. 84 percent are denied--so that the denial by the administrative law judge is upheld. By the way, there is no hearing and no personal appearance before the Appeals Council.  Everything is submitted on paper and is reviewed in the absence of the claimant or the representative. It's a paper review. The AC does not t...