Along with every paycheck that you receive from your employer comes a corresponding deduction of Social Security taxes. For most people, Social Security is used for the purpose of retirement benefits that they can avail of when they reach the age of retirement. However, there is also a certain portion of your Social Security tax that can be used for a disability plan. Even if you are not quite at the retirement age yet, there is a clause in the Federal law that allows you to claim some Social Security benefits if you suffer from an injury or any other type of illness or disease that will prevent you from working. These disability benefits are designed to give you a source of income when you are not able to work.
Disability is defined by the Social Security Act as the inability to engage in any income generating activity because of a physical or mental condition that can either result in death or will last for a period of not less than 12 months. Many people seem to be confused about when they can apply for Social Security disability benefits and when they can begin collecting payments. The fact is that you should apply for disability as soon as possible, even on the first day of your disability if you can manage to do so. The act of processing your claim can take much longer than expected and if you wait too long before doing so, you may miss out on some benefits, as well as run the risk of delaying the process even more. Even if you hire the services of a Social security lawyer, the entire claim process can still last a lot longer than you anticipated. Keep in mind that you will also have to be out of work for at least 5 months before you can begin to receive disability benefits.
The question of why the entire claim process takes so long...often lasting more than a year...is one that comes up often. Even with a competent Social Security lawyer on your side, the process can still take an excessively long time. While it is understandably quite frustrating to be out of work and at the same time unable to claim any benefits, the huge backlog of Social Security cases results in this inordinate delay. Since Social Security cases are processed in the order in which they come in, there is little that you can do but wait. In certain states in fact, the entire process has been known to take anywhere from eighteen months up to two years in order to get a hearing.
It is interesting to note that even if a Social Security Disability lawyer cannot help you get a hearing with an administrative law judge sooner, a good one can work wonders for your case even before you get a hearing. A good Social Security Disability lawyer will have enough experience to know what type of evidence to collect as well as how to use any opportunities to your advantage, such as filing the claim with the Office of Disability Determinations or coming up with an On the Record opinion so that a hearing for your case may not even be necessary. In any case, there are a number of obstacles that you have to deal with when filing for Social Security Benefits. But with an attorney your claim is more likely to be resolved in a matter of months, whereas going through the process by yourself your claim could take years.

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by: albert.tobega
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