When You Apply For Disability Do You Get It From The Day You Were Disabled Or The Day You Apply?

From the standpoint of the social security administration, disability is synonymous with the inability to engage in work activity; in other words, an individual's state of disability begins when they become unable to perform substantial gainful work activity due to the effects of a disabling condition or conditions.

However, and this can be confusing for applicants, this does not necessarily mean a person who has filed for disability will be paid disability benefits back to the day they became disabled. This is because the date of application and the date of disability onset (when you became unable to work according to SSA) both play an important role in determining when you will be able to receive disability benefits. It is also because the two disability programs administered by SSA treat the issue of retroactivity differently.

A couple things to keep in mind with regard to SSD, or social security disability:

1) If you are entitled to Social Security disability, you are allowed twelve months of retroactive disability benefits from the date you file your disability application, provided, of course, that you have not been able to perform substantial work activity for at least seventeen months and that your medical records will support an early enough onset date.

2) Social Security disability has a five-month waiting period (in which no disability benefits are paid) that begins with the onset date and lasts for five full months. This means, if you became disabled on January 15, you would not be entitled to receive disability benefits until July.

Conversely, Supplemental Security income disability, a.k.a. SSI, begins with the month of application for disability.

Although Supplemental Security Income disability, or SSI, beneficiaries do not receive retroactive benefits prior their application date, they have the advantage of no waiting period. Consequently, if you are filing for SSI and are found disabled per your application date, you will receive disability benefits from the month you made your application for disability benefits provided that you meet the SSI program income and resource limitations. And if your case has been in the system for quite some time, as is often the case, you may be eligible for a considerable amount in back pay, or past due benefits (which people often get confused with retroactive benefits).

It should be said, of course, that most applicants who are approved for social security disability or SSI disability do end up receiving at least some amount in back pay ---though, as was indicated earlier, "retroactive benefits", or benefits that may be owed to a claimant prior to the filing of a disability claim, only apply to social security disability and not SSI.

A couple things to keep in mind with regard to SSI disability:

1) You may remain entitled to both disability programs if your Social Security disability (monthly) benefit amount remains lower than what is currently the full, or maximum, SSI monthly benefit amount.

2) Even if your Social Security disability benefit amount is more than the SSI monthly amount, you still may be able to receive SSI disability benefits for the five-month Social Security disability waiting period provided you meet the SSI disability income and resource limits.





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Social Security Disability Secrets

Social Security Disability Benefit Questions



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