If you are approved for Social Security Disability at any level you will be sent an award notice.
If your disability claim is approved at the initial level, you will receive an award notice once the disability examiner finds you disabled and returns your disability claim to your local Social Security office. All disability claim decisions are returned to the local Social Security office for further non-disability development. Most often, disability cases that involve Supplemental Security Income disability entitlement take longer to be approved at your local Social Security office.
If you receive a disability allowance involving entitlement to SSI for any period of time, you will be contacted to complete an end of the line interview. During this interview you will be asked questions to determine if you still meet the non-disability requirements of the need based program, which simply means you must meet the income and resource limits to be approved for disability benefits even if you are medically determined to be disabled.
So, once your local Social Security office has completed its development they will send you an award letter that provides you with information as to the amount of your benefit, the amount of any back disability benefit pay (if you are entitled to back pay), and when you can expect to receive you first monthly benefit check.
Generally, initial award letters do not give specific back pay amounts if SSI is involved, because manual benefit computations have to be done and sent to Social Security payment centers for processing.
What if you receive your approval for disability from an administrative law judge hearing?
Well, just as with other levels of the Social Security disability process you will receive an award letter stating that your disability has been approved. However, it may take longer to receive this letter as it takes time for the administrative law judge decision to be written and forwarded to the payment center for processing.
These award letters also tell you what your benefit amount is and when you should expect to receive your first disability benefit check. Unfortunately, if your administrative law judge hearing involves SSI entitlement you may have to wait for your final award letter.
SSI administrative law judge hearing decisions are also sent to your local Social Security office for an end line review to determine if you still meet income and resource limits as well as what your living arrangements are.
Since SSI is a need based program, your living arrangements can affect the amount of your monthly benefits. SSI disability recipients must be contributing their fair share of the household expenses to receive the full amount of the SSI disability monthly benefit.
As you might expect, there may be more than one award letter involved in your disability claim, especially if you qualify for both SSI and Social Security disability benefits for any period of time.
