Let’s say you can’t sit for more than two hours out of a hour day. Also, your limitation prevents you from being able to stand for more than a certain period of time, let’s say for an hour a day or you’re unable to walk for more than an hour out of the eight hour work day. An experienced Social Security attorney will be able to tell you the importance of these facts to your case. If the doctor list those and they’re supported by the medical records stating why your condition or what condition you have and whether it’s reasonably expected to produce those limitations now, social security can use that to grant you. Now, a lot of times someone made meet a listing that would be entitled them to get social security disability benefits, but they don’t have the medical documentation to prove they need a listing. It’s important to find out what limitations are required to meet that listing by reviewing the listing and then checking in with the medical providers to see if you have that documentation or if the doctor can write up a report indicating what indicates that you have that limitation.
Social Security has their listing categorized by different areas or systems of the body and restrictions. They also have a list, several, uh, different types of cancer qualify to get an emergency award of benefits. If you are diagnosed with cancer, be sure to ask your Social Security attorney about your rights. Basically Social Security’s policy is that if you’ve got these certain types of cancer, they’re going to go ahead and grant you benefits initially until they have a chance to look at it in more detail to see if you qualify or not. Social security disability law can be complicated because there are many different rules that either will allow you to get benefits or prevents you from getting benefits and the way gathered the evidence to meet social security requirements is important. These complicated rules make having a Social Security attorney even more important.
Social Security has different phases that a person has to go through. The first is the initial application phase. You might not need a Social Security attorney at this phase. The initial phase is where you fill out your application with social security. Allow them to gather the medical records, provide them with any documentation they may be missing and they’ll make an initial determination. They will send you a letter telling you whether you’ve received your allowed benefits or whether they have denied you benefits. Once they send that letter out, you have a period of time in which you can file your request for reconsideration. If they denied you benefits, you must meet that request for reconsideration deadline and request a reconsideration or you will lose all your back benefits and have to start over.
The request for reconsideration stage immediately follows the initial denial. Many times you will want a Social Security attorney to represent you at the reconsideration stage. If you file your appeal on time, typically it may take a month to two or three months before, so security accepts or denies your case from the time you filed the application. The reconsiderations days can we take about the same amount of time a month to two to three months before you find out if they are going to accept or deny your claim at that stage, the people who hear your case at the reconsideration stage are different than the people who made your initial determination. However, they are trained the same way as the folks who heard it the first time or reviewed your case the first time. So unless you have new evidence to submit, they’re most likely going to come to the same result unless they made an error. Uh, the first time. Again, it’s important to get medical records from your doctors talking about what kind of restrictions and limitations you have based upon your physical or mental condition or combination of your physical and mental condition.
What’s determinations made at the reconsideration stage? If you’re granted benefits you win and don’t need a Social Security attorney unless the time frame for finding you disabled is incorrect or if Social Security made some other mistake. If you are denied benefits, then you’re going to need to request an administrative law judge or at least consider your chances of getting a administrative law judge decision in your favor. This is definitely the time to have a Social Security attorney if you haven’t hired one before. The time periods can vary on how long it takes from the time you requested administrative law judge until you actually have a hearing. That can be as quick as eight months. And of course that doesn’t seem too quick. If you’re unable to work or in some cases it can go out to about 26 months. In 2019 is taking about 14 months to get a decision in front of the Tulsa administrative law judges.
When you go to a hearing in front of an administrative law judge, you’re going to have a few people there. You’re going to have the administrative law judge, of course. You’re also going to have a person operating the reporting equipment which reports whatever body says there. It also have a vocational expert present. The claimant will be present and if you have a representative, that person will be there with you. That representative should be a Social Security attorney. Then there can than upon the circumstances of the case to have a vocational experts either available or either there or available by telephone or video conference. Vocational expert is a person there to testify about the availability of different types of jobs based upon certain restrictions and limitations. So for instance, it’s common for the judge to ask the vocational expert a hypothetical question such as if you have a person the same age and has the same background as the claimant and they have this restriction and this limitation, are there any jobs in the national economy? The person would be able to do. And so the vocational expert will address what jobs are available or not available based upon restrictions and limitations, the vocational or medical expert, not the vocational, the medical expert who will be there to address medical questions such as do the medical records support a certain type of diagnosis. And does that diagnosis reasonably expected to lead to certain restrictions or limitations and do those restrictions or do the medical records support a listing? In other words, does the condition the claimant have meet or equal one of those listings that, so security has that resume as well. Basically if you get that you are determined to be the same old ordinance is social security lines. So security makes their own determination about disability based upon their requirements of that five part test.