When you go to a Disability Hearing, will the Judge give you an Immediate Decision?

Colorado Attorney Tom Stasiuk wrote about this topic in a recent post and mentioned that in most social security disability hearings and SSI disability hearings, the Judge will not issue a disability decision at the time of the hearing.

This is the case in most hearings and, typically, it may be weeks or months before a disability claimant will receive a decision from an Administrative law judge. In fact, though many judges will state that their decision will be forthcoming in X number of weeks, it sometimes (from my experience in North Carolina, I would say "often") turns out to be the case that an ALJ decision from a hearing takes months.

Why so long? Backlogs. ALJs have a lot of cases and are continuing to get new cases in. Since they can only dispose of cases but so fast, you have backlogs.

Then, there's also the fact that though a disability judge will render a decision on a disability hearing, he or she does not actually compile and send the hearing notice of decision. This is handled by a decision writer.

How long can it take to get a decision from an ALJ following a disability hearing? I have actually checked on cases from nine to twelve months following a hearing for which a decision had not yet been received. Is this uncommon and somewhat rare? Thankfully, it is. However, it is not uncommon to wait three months or longer to receive a disability hearing decision.










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