If your impairment is not expected to result in death, it must have persisted or will remain active for at least 12 months in order for you to receive Social Security benefits. If you are uncertain about whether you meet this “duration requirement,” be sure to consult with a Bakersfield disability lawyer as soon as possible.

A Bakersfield Disability Lawyer Defines the Duration Requirement

Your Bakersfield disability attorney will assure you that meeting the duration requirement should not be a major obstacle. You will meet this requirement even if your impairment was inactive or in remission for a short-term period, as long as it was active long enough to prevent you from performing substantial gainful activity for a significant amount of time.

However, as your Bakersfield disability lawyer will tell you, the Social Security Administration will not allow you to add up separate severe impairments to satisfy the duration requirement.

Case Denial Based on the Duration Requirement

Your case will likely be denied, if, at the time of the decision:

1. You did not meet the duration requirement.
2. You have an impairment that is expected to improve within 12 months.

Your Bakersfield disability lawyer will explain why your case was delayed. If you suffer from impairments with indeterminate duration, a state agency may delay your case in order to confirm whether you would be disabled long enough to qualify for benefits. But since the long waiting time for the administrative process generally takes up the required 12 months, the SSA will have enough time to make a proper evaluation of your impairment.

What to Do Once You Meet the Duration Requirement

When the SSA finds that you met the duration requirement, you or your Bakersfield disability attorney can request a finding of a closed period of disability if you have recovered sufficiently enough to possibly return to work.

If you are seeking an experienced Bakersfield disability lawyer to assist you in filing for Social Security disability benefits, please contact us. The initial consultation is free.

Your Bakersfield Social Security disability attorneys can explain to you the five stages through which the Social Security Administration determines your qualifications for disability. Once the finding is made, the process stops.

The five stages are called sequential because if, at any step, you are deemed qualified or unqualified, the process ends. The stages are as follows:

1. Do you meet SSA standards for “substantial gainful activity” (SGA)?

2. Has a medical practitioner designated your condition “severe”?

3. Is your condition “equal” to one found in the “Listing of Impairments”?

4. Given your “residual functional capacity” (RFC), can you perform your “past relevant work” (PRW)?

5. All things considered (time of life, RFC, schooling), can you do another job that is currently available?

Terminology
Ask your Bakersfield Social Security disability attorneys about the specific legal definitions of the words enclosed in quotation marks.

Time Requirements
Your impairment has to continue for one full year.

Are You Disabled?
In short, you have two primary ways to qualify for SSI. Either your condition meets step three, in which case the process stops there, or it must meet all of the others ending at step five.

Or Not?
1. Are you engaged in “substantial gainful activity”?

2. Has a medical practitioner stated that you have no impairment or one that does not interfere with your work?

3. Have you had this condition for less than twelve months?

4. Can you perform your PRW?

5. Can you do another job?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, you are probably not disabled.

What Else Is There?
Not all of the requirements are disability related. You must have made adequate Social Security tax payments through your work history to earn the work quarters required to apply, and your income and assets must fall within specific limits.

Who Can Help?
If your concerned about your ability to qualify for SSI please contact us.

How long does it take the Social Security Administration to hold a hearing, issue a decision, and pay benefits?

Your Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer will tell you that there is much variation on the amount of time that elapses between a hearing request and the rendering of a decision. The average nationally is 15.5 months; however, some states take more time and others less.

Once the hearing is completed, and unless a bench decision is given by the judge at the hearing itself, two or three months on average will pass before a decision is issued.

If the judge awards you benefits, it will usually take one or two months before you begin to receive any money. Back benefits may take anywhere from one to six months from the decision date to begin being paid. If SSI is involved, it may take even longer.

Therefore, you will need to be patient as the process unfolds. Your Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer has little opportunity to speed up the process; his or her best efforts will be directed at preventing the process from taking even longer.

How does the disability hearing notification arrive?

Your lawyer should notify you first. The administrative law judge’s assistant will be working with your lawyer to obtain a date and once that is complete your lawyer will notify you by mail. You will then receive from the judge a Notice of Hearing.

What if I receive the Notice of Hearing first?

There may have been a failure to contact your lawyer to arrange the date of the hearing. You should therefore contact your lawyer immediately to inform him or her of the Notice of Hearing.

Contact

If you have concerns or questions about your Social Security disability case and would like to speak with an experienced and knowledgeable Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer, please contact us.

Social Security disability claimants who are initially denied and appeal will eventually be scheduled a hearing before an administrative law judge. This is what you want, for as your Bakersfield disability attorney will tell you, your best chance of having the claim approved is at this level. However, you need to keep certain things in mind.

Show Up Early

Unless your Bakersfield disability attorney requests that you arrive at a particular time for your SSD hearing, you should plan on being there a half hour before it is set to begin. Even if the Notice of Hearing you received mentions arriving earlier so that you can go over your file, half an hour should be plenty of time, considering your Bakersfield disability attorney has already gone over the file thoroughly. That said, it is very important that you not be late; the hearings usually begin on time.

Attire

There is no need for you to dress up for your hearing since it is an informal matter. However, within reason, you should dress in a neat, respectable manner, wearing clothes you are comfortable in.

Practice Reticence

Your Bakersfield disability attorney will advise you that a disability hearing is serious business. A legal hearing is not the appropriate time or place to make jokes or talk glibly about your case. Your lawyer will even discourage you from discussing your case prior to or after the hearing anywhere in the building or grounds where a stranger might overhear. There may be quite a few SSA employees in and around the building who could overhear you, misinterpret your comments and form a wrong impression.

Phones

If you bring your cell phone, turn it completely off prior to your hearing.

If you have questions and concerns about your disability case and would like to speak with an experienced and competent Bakersfield disability attorney, please contact us.

Your Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer will advise you that in order to be qualified as substantial gainful activity (SGA), the work must consist of performing substantial mental or physical activities.  Work might not be considered substantial if:

• You cannot “to do ordinary or simple tasks satisfactorily without more supervision or assistance than is usually given other people doing similar work.”
• The work you are performing “involves minimal duties that make little or no demands” on you and that are of “little or no use” to either your employer or to the functioning of your self-employed business.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) states “Work activity is gainful if it is the kind of work usually done for pay or profit, whether or not a profit is realized.”  Nevertheless, in spite of this broad definition, “gainful” is most often determined by the amount of your earnings when you are employed by someone else.

The Income Factor

For the self-employed, your Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer will tell you that the Social Security Administration takes a close look at both the type of work you perform and the value it gives to your business.  This is true even if you are operating at a loss, as is common for many self-employed individuals from time to time.  The SSA pays particular attention to this step when evaluating employed claimants who are able to manipulate the amount of their income or time spent working, such as those who are employed by relatives.

Your Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer will also tell you that illegal activity may be considered “substantial gainful activity,” since the SSA evaluates work “without regard to legality.”

Additionally, the SSA makes a determination on “substantial gainful activity” by averaging income in accordance to the rules that consider:

• The period of time worked
• The nature of the work
• If the SGA level fluctuated during that time period (current SGA figures can be found at www.ssa.gov/cola/)

Contact Us

If you would like to consult an experienced and knowledgeable Bakersfield Social Security disability lawyer concerning your disability case, please contact us.

The Social Security Administration has two different disability programs—Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income. Your Bakersfield disability attorney will advise you that there is a five-step evaluation process used by the SSA to determine disability for either of these programs.  The process is sequential, meaning that if at any one step the administration finds that you are not disabled, the process ends there and no further steps are considered.  The five steps are listed below:

Five-Step Sequential Evaluation Process

1. You are currently not employed in “substantial gainful activity” (SGA)
2. You have been found to have a medically determinable impairment that is “severe”
3. The Social Security Administration has what is known as the “Listing of Impairments.”  You must meet or “equal” one of the impairments in the list
4. You are no longer able to do “past relevant work” (PRW) when considering your “residual functional capacity” (RFC)
5. When taking into consideration your RFC, level of education, age, and past work history, you are not able to adapt to other employment or types of work that exist in significant numbers in the economy

Pay close attention to the terms that are quoted in the above steps and their acronyms.  Your Bakersfield disability attorney will advise you that these terms have specific legal definitions that may not necessarily be the definitions you associate with them.

You should also be aware that there is a “duration requirement” that must be met in order for you to be found disabled.  That requirement mandates that your disability must last for a period of 12 full months.

To summarize, there are two ways to be found disabled by the Social Security Administration:

• Your impairment is found to meet or equal one of those in the Listing of Impairments.  Steps 4 and 5 are not necessary.
• If your impairment is not in the Listing of Impairments, then all the other sequential requirements must be met, finishing with Step 5.

Contact Us

If you would like to speak with an experienced and knowledgeable Bakersfield disability attorney about your disability case, please contact us.

A Fresno disability attorney will advise you that objective findings are extremely important because, in effect, they determine the extent of possibilities.  However, it is generally true that for an individual who has an impairment that does not equal or meet the Social Security Administration’s particular medical findings (Listing of Impairments), his or her capacity for work cannot be determined solely by looking at the medical findings. For instance, it is acknowledged by the SSA that an absence of correlation exists between joint function and x-ray evidence.  66 Fed. Reg. 58,017 (2001).  Likewise, it has been concluded by research that no correlation exists between lumbar disability and range of motion.  See Parks, et al., “A Comparison of Lumbar Range of Motion and Functional Ability Scores in Patients with Low Back Pain,” Spine, Vol 28, No. 4, pp. 380-384, 2003.

How should forming an opinion concerning a patient’s ability to perform activities related to work be approached?  

A Fresno disability attorney knows that the best plan of action is to visit with the patient, andget an opinion from the patient concerning his or her ability to perform activities related to work.  The attorney would then exercise professional judgment and make a determination as to the consistency between his knowledge of the patient and his or her impairments, and the patient’s stated limitations. 

Should a patient’s description of his or her limitations simply be endorsed?  

No, because that would be abdicating the exercise of professional judgment.  Sometimes patients report symptoms that simply cannot be realistically attributed to either a medical diagnosis or medication side effects.  Likewise, some patients describe limitations so serious they cannot possibly be attributed to the patient’s medical findings, impairments, personality and history.

If you have questions about Social Security disability you would like to discuss with a competent, experienced and knowledgeable Fresno disability attorney, please contact us.

Are opinions regarding ability to do sustained work subjective?

 Yes.  The Social Security Admoninistrati (SSA) realizes that disability claimants are limited by symptoms that are subjective and difficult to quantify. Your Fresno disability lawyer understands how these subjective determinations are made, and how to represent your case accordingly.

Neither clinical nor laboratory diagnostic techniques have the ability to objectively measure symptoms as they are experienced by the claimant. For this reason, the SSA must rely on (1) a doctor’s opinion, and (2) tangible, medicalfindings that support the doctor’s opinion.

A Doctor’s Opinion

In lieu of an objective measurement of a claimant’s symptoms, the SSA relies on a doctor’s exercise of professional judgment. This is used to determine whether or not the patient’s symptoms can reasonably be connected to a medical diagnosis.  Therefore, according to the SSA, a physician may be asked for his or her opinion about the patient’s mental or physical restriction, the nature and severity of the patient’s symptoms, and what the patient is capable of despite his or her impairments.

Medical Findings

Medical signs and findings must be reasonably consistent with the patient’s claimed symptom-related limitations.

When deciding if claimed limitations are reasonable for one patient, can he or she be compared to an average person with the same impairment? 

No.  Your Fresno disability lawyer will advise you that the SSA does not determine disability status by comparing you to other claimants. The SSA’s rules recognize that an “average man” test is not pertinent because symptoms limit some patients more or less than they do others.  For instance, an example given by the SSA is that of someone with a low back disorder who is completely capable of sustained medium work activity while another person with the same low back disorder may not be capable of even light work activity on a sustained basis because of their pain. Individual responses to impairment and pain must be considered, because pain tolerance and the ability to cope with impairment vary among individuals.

If you would like to discuss Social Security disability with a competent and knowledgeable Fresno disability lawyer, please contact us.