Social Security Disability Appeals Time Limit

If your initial disability claim with the Social Security Administration is denied, you will have to begin the Social Security disability appeal process. You have sixty days plus five days for mailing to appeal a Social Security disability denial.

So if your initial disability claim is denied, you need to contact Social Security to obtain the proper appeal paperwork and return that paperwork within the sixty five day appeal period. If you have internet access, you can file your appeal online by filing out the online appeal request (i.e. request for reconsideration or a request for an administrative law judge hearing, depending on the level at which your denial occurred), the disability form 3441 (this is basically an update of your medical information), and print and sign your medical release forms.

Just a reminder -- you must return your signed medical release forms to your local Social Security office even if you file your appeal online. Additionally, you should consider the fact that if you wait the full sixty five days to file your appeal, each time you file you could be adding as much as three or four months to the overall processing time of your claim, which means you will have a longer wait for disability benefits. So it is advisable to quickly complete a return the necessary forms to Social Security.

What if you miss the appeal period deadline? If you miss the appeal period deadline, you may have to begin your disability claim again. However, you may be given good cause for late filing if there is a legitimate reason for being late. You should provide Social Security with a statement as to why you are filing your appeal late. Social Security can consider the fact that you have a severe mental or physical impairment that prevented you from filing your appeal timely, or that you were hospitalized or incarcerated during your appeal period, or that you did not receive your disability denial notice.

If Social Security is able to grant you good cause for the late filing of your disability appeal, you will be able to continue your disability claim. A word of caution: it is easier to receive good cause at the reconsideration appeal level than at the ALJ (administrative law judge hearing) appeal level. In fact, unless there is a truly good reason for a late filing, many administrative law judges will routinely deny good cause.

If you feel you will have a hard time completing and returning your disability appeal paperwork, you might want to obtain the services of a Social Security disability representative (non-attorney or attorney representatives).

A good Social Security disability representative will file your appeal timely and should you have to attend an administrative law judge hearing, will present your disability claim in a way that will be favorable to an approval for disability benefits.






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Send in your Social Security Disability Appeal Asap

Here's a simple tip for individuals who have applied for disability benefits with the social security administration and have been denied. Send in your disability appeal immediately. Why do I say this, particularly when the advice may seem so very obvious?

For this reason. As a disability examiner working on social security disability and SSI cases, I found that an alarmingly high number of individuals who had been previously denied for disability had failed to request an appeal and then turn in the paperwork in a timely manner. Consequently, they were forced to file brand new applications and were, in the great majority of instances, subsequently denied again. Had those individuals simply submitted their appeals on time, they could have saved several months of lost time and possibly received their benefits months sooner.

The social security administration actually gives claimants a fairly generous amount of time in which to submit an appeal following a denial that occurs at any level of the claim system. The appeal period, the time in which a claimant is allowed to file an appeal, is 60 days from the date of the denial notice. However, claimants are actually given an additional five days to account for mailing, so claimants are really given 65 days from the date of the denial to get their appeal sent in.

By sending in a social security disability appeal, or an SSI disability appeal, a claimant can move their claim further along in the system to a point where the chances of being approved are much higher.

The first appeal, the request for reconsideration, does not typically offer a better chance of approval. And this is largely because the reconsideration appeal is handled by the same agency that is responsible for making a determination on the initial claim (the agency is known in most states as DDS, or disability determination services). In fact, in most states, the chances of being denied on the reconsideration appeal are actually higher than the chances of being denied on the initial claim.

However, claimants who get denied on the reconsideration appeal are permitted to file a second appeal. This appeal is a request for a hearing before an administrative law judge. At the hearing level, where claimants are permitted to have their case argued by a disability representative, the odds of being approved for disability are 60 percent or greater for all claims. And for claimants who are adults (versus children) and have certain physical or mental impairments, the odds of approval may be substantially higher than this.

How do you ensure that your disability appeal will be submitted on time? Simply contact the social security administration as soon as you receive a disability notice of denial on your claim. Then, when your appeal paperwork arrives, immediately complete the forms and return them. If you are represented, of course, you should probably still contact the social security administration and notify them that you wish to file an appeal (to cover your bases). However, after you do this you should contact your disability representative so that they may file the appeal on your behalf.

Note: if you are represented and have notified your representative (a disability attorney or a non-attorney claimant's representative) that an appeal needs to be filed, you may find it helpful to followup with your representative's office a couple of weeks later.

Why? Because some representative's offices take the attitude that as long as the appeal is sent in before the deadline, everything is fine. However, in actuality, the appeal should be sent in well before the 60 day deadline simply to avoid processing time on the case, so not a single day, other than what is absolutely necessary, is spent on the case.






Return to:

Social Security Disability Secrets

Social Security Disability Benefit Questions



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