After you apply for Social Security Disability (SSDI), you will be sent a FUNCTION REPORT to fill out and return. This form asks a lot of very detailed questions about your daily activities: driving, cooking, cleaning, dressing, visiting others, hobbies, etc.
The Social Security Administration will use your answers to determine whether you can work or not. You must show on this Function Report that you have limitations that do not permit you to work a full-time job. You do this by showing your limitations in activities of daily living.
Your goal in the Function Report is to show the struggles and challenges you have with everyday life. It may not be sufficient to answer a question with "Yes" and fail to explain.
For example: "Can you drive?" If you answer "Yes," Social Security will assume that your ability to drive is unlimited: you can drive anytime, anywhere and as often or as far as you want. That may not be true and would need to be explained.
The Function Report gives you the opportunity to explain the ways you are limited in your daily functions.
The Function Report is not a questionnaire about your past accomplishments. It is not a resume or a chance for you to tell the SSA how well you used to do things. Instead, the activities of daily living form is about the problems you face every day (NOW) due to your medical condition(s). The form should tell the SSA if you can no longer cook, clean, or do the laundry without help. If you don’t write about your limitations, then the SSA will use your answers to prove that you can work.
If some days are better than others, address your limitations on the "bad days." You should not exaggerate but neither should you minimize. Some clients tell me, "I feel bad about how little I can do." This attitude, of course, will get your claim denied if it's transferred onto the Function Report. Remember, you are not filling out a job application or a resume: you are trying to convince Social Security that you can't work. Help them to understand why.
Finally, the Function Report should address symptoms--how your medical conditions affect your daily performance. Don't talk about medical terms. Avoid words like arthritis, congestive heart failure, spondylosis, diabetes or degenerative disc disease. Talk about how these conditions make you FEEL and how they restrict your ability to sit, stand, walk, lift, bend, concentrate, etc. It is a FUNCTION REPORT.
As a matter of caution, here is a real statement I once saw on a Social Security denial letter:
On her Function Report, the claimant admitted that she can prepare meals, do the laundry, vacuum, shop, drive and groom and bathe herself. She further states that she goes to church, visits her family weekly and plays games on the computer...."
In short, this individual's Function Report convinced the Social Security Administration that she has very few significant limitations that would prevent her from working. So, she is not disabled.
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Having trouble with Social Security disability? Contact THE FORSYTHE FIRM for a free consultation with no obligation, no pressure. Just call us. (256) 799-0297.
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