Peyton Manning and Your Social Security Disability Hearing

When your Social Security disability hearing is scheduled, you can help your cause by thinking about Peyton Manning while you prepare for your hearing date.

Manning, as you probably know, recently retired from the National Football league after 18 seasons, capped off by a league championship this past February.

But Peyton’s greatness and success on the football field is not especially relevant to your disability case. Instead, his focus and drive in coming back from a serious neck injury and four (4) neck surgeries, including a disc fusion, are worthy of review.

Peyton could have retired after his September, 2011 surgery. Following this surgery and continuing to this day, he has no feeling in the fingertips of his throwing hand. When he first started rehabbing, he could barely throw a football 10 yards and was in constant pain.

Had Peyton retired in 2011 or 2012 no one would have questioned his decision, nor would his status as a hall of famer been challenged. Continue reading →

Unconventional, Non-Medical Evidence That Can Help You Win

With approval rates on the decline at hearing offices throughout the country, disability lawyers and their clients have to find creative and compelling evidence to make their cases stand out.

In my practice I regularly look for evidence beyond medical records and medical source statements. Often times you can find very convincing evidence in the form of employee files, school records, statements from former co-workers and supervisors and claimant maintained pain diaries.

Now, to be sure, judges are most concerned about your medical record and how your medical issues impact your capacity to work. However your doctor’s main concern when keeping medical records tends to focus on medical issues alone – rarely will medical records contain the specific vocational capacity observations or opinions that judges rely upon.

We can ask your doctor complete a functional capacity evaluation or narrative report (often at a cost of several hundred dollars) but some doctors do not wish to get involved in disability matters and others don’t feel equipped to make vocational capacity conclusions.

This is where unconventional evidence comes in. Continue reading →

WSJ Editorial Slamming Social Security Disability Riddled with Errors of Fact

You have probably heard that the Social Security disability trust fund will run out of money in 2016 and that all beneficiaries will face an across the board cut if Congress does not act. There are a number of relatively painless accounting moves Congress can make to shore up the system and the inability of our elected representatives to take action arises more from political grandstanding than concern about the numbers or concern about the truly interested parties – disabled people who have worked and paid money into the system but who are now unable to work.

One thing that everyone can agree upon is that the system needs help.

Social Security recently announced that the $300 million computer system they purchased to run its massive bureaucracy does not work so that will have to be redone.
The disability system uses a labor market analysis resource called the Dictionary of Occupational Titles to help judges understand if you have the capacity to function in the working world. Unfortunately the D.O.T. was last updated in 1991 and includes such occupations as typewriter repairperson, telegram messenger and horse-and-wagon driver.
The approval rate among judges within the same hearing office can vary wildly. For example in the Atlanta downtown hearing office, there is one judge who approves 3% of cases assigned to him while another judge two doors over approves 66% of his cases. How would you like to see Judge 3% on your hearing notice?

Unfortunately with all the political grandstanding, the academics are coming out of the woodwork with their observations and solutions. This past week Professor Mark Warshawsky and economics grad student Ross Marchand published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal basically asserting that disability claimants can easily game a fraud riddled system.

While The Warshawsky/Marchand piece fits a certain narrative it is so riddle with factual errors that one questions what research standards now apply in academia. Continue reading →

How Does a Social Security Judge Decide if I have “Transferable Skills” for Grid Rule Purposes?

This is a good question – the short answer is that judges will look to vocational expert witness testimony to determine whether a claimant has acquired transferable skills.

Your question got me thinking that it might be helpful to review how the grid rules work and to take my readers through a grid rule analysis, so, here you go:

The grid rules, or “medical vocational guidelines” can qualify you for Social Security disability benefits even if you have some capacity to work, but you are not likely to find work because of limited skills and a limited education.

In order to qualify for a finding of disability under the grid rules you must have exertional limitations. This means that your medical issues must impact your physical capacity. Thus, a person asserting disability based on depression, or bi-polar disorder, or schizophrenia could never qualify under the grid rules [1. Such a person could, however, qualify for disability based on a listing or using a functional capacity argument.]

You can look at the grid rules here.

The grid rules look at several factors: your age, your education, the skill level of your past work and whether or not your past work generated any transferrable skills. SSA lays out these factors in a table divided by grid lines – thus the name.

When a judge applies the grid rules he first must make a decision about your capacity for work. If you are limited to sedentary work, you are more likely to be found disabled under the grid rules than if you are limited to light or medium work.

Let’s analyze how the grid rules work in practice. Continue reading →

How Does a Social Security Judge Decide if I have "Transferable Skills" for Grid Rule Purposes?

Jonathan
August 11, 2014
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This is a good question – the short answer is that judges will look to vocational expert witness testimony to determine whether a claimant has acquired transferable skills.

Your question got me thinking that it might be helpful to review how the grid rules work and to take my readers through a grid rule analysis, so, here you go:

You can look at the grid rules here.

Let’s analyze how the grid rules work in practice. Continue reading →

How to Explain Earnings After Your Disability Onset Date

If your earnings record shows salary earned after the date you say you became disabled, you can be sure that the judge in your Social Security disability hearing will ask for an explanation.

Example: you say you became disabled on April 3, but your earnings record shows income in May, June and July.

In this video I explain how I advise my clients to respond to questions about post-onset earnings in three common scenarios:

unsuccessful work attempts
accrued earnings or benefits that are paid after the last date you were physically present at work
part time work

No matter what the reason, always discuss with your lawyer work, work attempts or payments received after the date you claim that your disability began.