Appealing Your Social Security Disability Onset Date

There is no denying that the most difficult objective of the Social Security disability process is to get the Social Security Administration to agree that an applicant is disabled, but even if that happens there is still a possibility that a claimant will disagree with Social Security’s decision.

This sounds ludicrous, but it is true. There are times when a claimant and the Social Security Administration agree that the claimant is disabled, but disagree about the date in which the claimant became disabled, which could have a huge financial impact on a case.

Considering there may not only be months, but years worth of discrepancy between when a claimant insists disability occurred and the Social Security Administration verifies disability, you could be talking well in excess of thousands of dollars.

All is not lost though. If you are found disabled by the Social Security Administration at a date different from the one you claim, it is called a Partially Favorable Decision. Similar to appealing a Social Security medical denial, you can also appeal a partially favorable decision and receive your monthly disability payments while you wait for a final decision, but there is some risk to this.

Any time you appeal a Social Security ruling you are asking them to reconsider your entire case. When this happens, Social Security does have the option to come back and say that you were never really disabled to begin with and ask you to pay back any disability payments that had been made to you previously.

When you receive a partially favorable decision, it would be wise to consult a disability attorney or representative to go over your options because it is a complex issue and you don’t want to make the wrong decision. To learn more about partially favorable decisions click here.