What Happens After You Get a Fully Favorable Disability Decision?

There are many different factors that influence whether you will receive a partially approved or fully approved disability. Some of the most common are that the SSA believes you previously had a disability, or they disagree about your start date. If a partially favorable decision was given to you because they believe you had a disability in the past, they are arguing that you were disabled at some point in the past, but you have since made a recovery and no longer meet the definition of disability. 

This may be noted in your letter as a closed period of benefits. In this situation, the Social Security Administration issues you a one-time payment rather than ongoing monthly payments. For someone still suffering from the ongoing impacts of a disability, this can be problematic, as this one-time payment may not support you for the length of your current disability. 

This lack of understanding about your medical condition is very complicated to untangle, which is why hiring a Social Security lawyer working at Morgan & Morgan may be the best way for you to help navigate this legal process and improve your chances of getting a fully approved decision. The second reason that the SSA may issue you a partially approved decision is that they argue with you over what is known as your disability onset date. 

As you submit your initial application, you must submit the day on which your disability started. If you write this as an alleged onset date, and if the reviewer agrees that this is the date your disability first started, you would receive a fully approved decision. 

However, if the SSA believes that your medical condition does meet the grounds for disability but disagrees about when the disability began, they will instead send out a partially favorable decision. A partially favorable decision may differ on the onset dates, which means that you would then need to wait the five-month hold period after your initial onset date. The determination of your actual disability onset date is extremely important for making sure that you get benefits as soon as possible.

If you've received a partially favorable decision, speaking with a Social Security lawyer like the team at Morgan & Morgan can help you review all of your legal options. Getting a partially favorable decision is not an optimal outcome because you don't receive as much money as you might be entitled to. 

 If the difference in these amounts is very small, it may not be worth the extra effort for you to go through and appeal. However, the differences in these approval amounts may be substantial. If you are concerned about getting a better decision, especially if your existing benefits as approved will be much smaller than expected, you need to work with a Social Security lawyer. 

You are not able to limit your appeal to only the portion of the Social Security Administration's decision that you do not agree with. Instead, your whole case gets reexamined in an appeal, and this means that there is the chance that you may be found not disabled for any period. This is one reason that it is crucial to work with a qualified social security lawyer. A Social Security lawyer will set you up in the best position to protect your underlying right to disability benefits and help you present evidence about your disability onset date or other aspects of a partially favorable decision that you do not agree with.

Even with all of the appropriate medical information to open your own claim for benefits, it can be beneficial to retain a lawyer to help you with this process. The right attorney can be instrumental in helping you to create your initial application so as to minimize the possibility of making errors. You don't want to deal with any unnecessary delays or denials of your disability benefits because of mistakes you made in the initial application. An attorney who is very familiar with a disability benefits application process will know the best ways for you to put all of this information together to make a compelling case about your date of disability and how it has affected your life. Although a lawyer cannot guarantee that this means you will be approved the first time around, you will put yourself in a far better situation to get approved for disability benefits. 

You can choose to work with an attorney for the initial application of your disability benefits, or you can retain an attorney after you have received a denial or a partially approved claim. In either situation, hiring the right attorney to assist you can make a world of difference in the outcome of your case.

If you get a partially favorable decision or your claim is outright denied, you are able to begin the appeals process. There are several different steps to the SSA appeals process. You may go through one or additional levels of this process. The first level is reconsideration, at which point someone who works for the Social Security Administration will look at your claim for a second time.

 A totally new review of your initial claim is initiated at this stage, and any additional documentation you provide will be considered as well. At the second stage of the appeals process, an administrative law judge reviews your information in a hearing. This is an individual who was not involved in either the reconsideration process or the initial application. Depending on the circumstances of where your hearing is, it can be conducted online or in person. The layer beyond the hearing review is the Appeals Council Review. 

The Appeals Council looks at your case to determine whether or not there are grounds for the case to proceed. If they believe that the administrative law judge made an appropriate decision in a partial approval or a denial, the Appeals Council may not accept your case. In the event that they do not accept the review, you can go directly to the next level of appeal, which is a lawsuit in federal court. 

It is very important to have someone who is very familiar with all aspects of the disability benefits application process, including taking on things, such as reviewing your application, working through why your application was deemed partially favorable or denied, helping you with submitting additional documentation, explaining the benefits available to you, representing you during any hearings and appeals and taking your case to federal court. The Social Security lawyers at Morgan & Morgan have ample experience in navigating this process and can assist you at each step.

To learn more about your case from the nation’s largest personal injury firm, contact Morgan & Morgan today for a free, no-obligation case evaluation. We’re here to help you get the compensation you deserve and need to move forward with your life.