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What not to do when Applying for Social Security Disability Benefits

Things don’t get much worse in life than having to deal with serious personal physical disabilities and being told that no public support could be forthcoming unless you are willing to jump through a bunch of hoops right out of a Kafka novel. The word on the street is that the process is so hard that two out of three poor people applying for Social Security disability benefits have their claims thrown out the first time around owing to some perceived deficiency in their applications. When people appeal the denial, they can be given the run-around for two or three years before they see some money. The main problem in all of this is that governmentalrequirements are never clear enough for ordinary folk. A system that is quite user-unfriendly is turned positively hostile by a lack of any accessible information on how to work the system. Let us do a little run down of some of the most common areas where people slip up when applying for Social Security disability benefits.

The first thing the pencil pushers will evaluate on your form is whether your particular disability actually appears on their list of approved problems; if it is there, because they do not believe that every problem is good enough for them, they need to see that you are so hobbled by it that you’re not able to make more than $940 a month for at least an year.  After this they will want proof that you really can’t do anything else with your existing condition. If you have worked on a farm all your life until an accident lays you low, they will wonder why you can’t work the mail desk at a corporation; and it won’t be enough that you are in no position at this time to learn new skills.

People can do one of two things when they put their problem down on the form: they can make it sound worse than it actually is, or they can be too modest. Sometimes, people who have always been a strong rock to their families find it hard to admit in writing that they are not so strong anymore: their pride gets in the way. There are some people who believe that saying it worse than it really is or can put them quickly past the judges too. If you claim to have lost your hearing for example, they will sometimes ask to see your hearing aid to see how loud you have turned the volume up. It is not easy to make an embellishment hold up;the plain truth is the best policy sometimes.

When you go about applying for Social Security disability benefits, the evaluator really needs to see that your problem keeps you from working effectively. They need numbers, specifics, and proof: if you had surgery on the larynx that makes it hard for you to speak in a clear voice and your job as a data-entry operator does not need your voice, they will not accept this disability for a claim. Applications for Social Security disability benefits are often rejected, and that is a fact. But to poor beleaguered applicants, it is often never clear how and when they need to appeal the rejection. Basically when your claim is rejected, you’re given three chances to appeal against the judgment; and each time, you have two months in which to try again. If you happen to be too ill or too poor to go all the way down to their  offices, your case is summarily closed and you’re asked to start all over again.

All applicants for social security disability benefits need to resolve today that they will never let the system get the better of them. When you show up at the hearing for the appeals process you’ll find that there is a backlog waiting to be heard before you. It can be very hard to overcome your problems and actually keep to the judge’s times. The important thing is to realize that what you obtain from the government is not a handout: it is what you earned through a lifetime of good hard work. If you give up on the process now, you’ll have considerable difficulty with other kinds of social support, Medicare and all. Armed with these words of advice, most people should be able to get off on the right foot claiming benefits.

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