If you’ve ever heard the song “The Waiting,” by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, the line that goes “Waiting is the hardest part,” is true for people who are anticipating anything whether it be bad or good. This also applies to Social Security disability claimants who seem to wait endlessly for Social Security to issue a decision on their claim.
Although it is frustrating, our advice as a Social Security disability law office is to make peace with waiting because you are going to do a lot of it during the life of a Social Security disability claim.
In life we all live by certain deadlines. At work you usually have a deadline of some sort to get a particular project done or you have a deadline in which to pay your bills by their due date. We even have deadlines on coupons we wish to use at the grocery store. Unfortunately, Social Security has no deadlines it has to follow, although the agency will issue deadlines of its own for certain things. Despite this hypocritical way of doing business, there really is not much anyone can do about it except to wait.
The hope is that once a claimant realizes that Social Security does not really have any deadlines it must follow, that this knowledge will help claimants and representatives deal with the waiting more reasonably.
- Countless times our clients have been informed in writing and verbally that their claim should receive a medical decision within 120 days. This probably happens about 50 percent of time. The other 50 percent of the time decisions take longer than 120 days and sometimes double that amount of time.
- Then there is the waiting period for claimants who have had a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). A typical amount of time to wait for a decision from an ALJ is 90 days, but sometimes it takes longer, much longer. There have been instances where it has taken an ALJ close to a year after the hearing to issue a decision.
- The wait times for hearings are pretty consistent nationwide, somewhere between 12 to 15 months, but there are exceptions. Some hearing’s offices have wait times as low as 7 or 8 months and some hearing’s offices have much longer wait times that are closer to two years.
- And then there is the Appeals Council. This entity accepts appeals of unfavorable decisions issued by ALJs. If an ALJ finds that a claimant is not medically disabled, the claimant can appeal that decision to the Appeals Council. Typically the Appeals Council is only reviewing the decision to make sure the AJL made his or her decision based on the proper criteria. The Appeals Council does not usually make a decision of whether or not a claimant is disabled and is more there to make sure the ALJ did not make any glaring mistakes in rendering a decision. After an appeal is filed with the Appeals Council, decisions usually take about 12 months to receive, but decisions can take as little as 6 months and as much as 18 months.
It is not difficult to see that a Social Security disability claim is likely to take close to two years before a final decision is reached and sometimes it can take well over two years. Although knowing this information will not make waiting the easiest part, but at least you can know what to expect.
