How do Lump Sum Payments Work in Social Security Disability?

hi there this is Jonathan Ginsberg and I want to talk to you today about lump sum benefits you may hear lawyers or people talking about lump sums in Social Security disability cases that they knew somebody or perhaps they received 15,000 20,000 30,000 50,000 80,000 a lump sum check after their social security case and of course that sounds like wow I'd love to get $50,000 deposited to my bank account is that true well it is true and the reason for that is that the delays we're having a disability are such that people past due benefits can get to 50 or 60 thousand dollars unfortunately pretty easily if you're waiting two or three years for a decision and you've got a year of past due benefits in addition to that you may have four years of past due benefits and if your benefit amount is two thousand dollars a month well you can see how it can get up to 50 60 70 thousand dollars pretty easily so I'm going to go through sort of how the lump sum past due benefits work it's a little bit technical obviously it's something that your lawyer can explain to you but I want you to have sort of the basic ideas of how this works so obviously the amount of your lump sum is going to depend on how much your monthly benefit is going to be and sometimes it's hard to find that out the Social Security Statement they used to mail us would tell you now you can go online to my Social Security and and you can kind of get an estimate for that sometimes your lawyer can get it but usually it's going to be somewhere in the $1,500 range it could be a little bit more a little bit lesson this I'm talking about SSDI not SSI SSI is a different subject we're talking about SSDI so again fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a month and it also depends on your the amount of time you're waiting so obviously you've got a certain amount of time you're waiting after you file on right now in many places that could be two years it can be three years so again if you add 36 months times your monthly benefit you can see that's a pretty good chunk of money right there but you can also go backwards and a disability SSDI you can claim an onset date of up to one year prior to the date you applied so if you apply April third of 2015 you can collect benefits going back to April 3rd of 2014 and again there's some rules of the calculations but that's kind of the general rule you can go back one year so obviously when you stop work from you realize you can't work anymore the sooner you apply the better because obviously if you want to go back you can do that obviously if you wait you know four years or five years and then you decide to apply you can allege any kind of onset you want so you could allege an onset in 1975 but it's going to be really difficult to win that because number one the evidence probably is not going to be there and number two judges are very reluctant to go back that farm let's say for sake of argument that you file disability and your legend and onset date three years from the day you you applied so three years Primus previously you're applying in 2015 and you're saying I became disabled in 2012 or 2013 well again you can only collect money up to one year prior to the date of your applications even if the judge found you disabled in 2012 you're only going to get paid from the one year anniversary for the date you actually filed now there's also something in Social Security called the five month waiting period which says the first five full months that you become disabled you don't get paid for so again if you apply let's just use the April April 3rd of 2015 you apply April 3rd of 2015 and you're alleging and onset date of April 3rd of 2015 I'm saying you're alleging an onset of April 3rd of 2014 what happens is that even though you made the judge may find you're disabled as of April 3rd of 2014 the first five full months of disability you don't get paid for so you're not going to get paid for April because it's a partial month you don't get paid for May June July August September you start getting paid in October of 2014 in this example so you can see that applying even if you're alleging an onset date back one year it doesn't really help you if you have that five month waiting period so the math works out that really if you're going to max out your benefits you want to apply an alleged set date that's at least eighteen months prior to the date of your application if again the medical supports that because that will eat up the five full months plus the partial any partial months plus the the year of past due benefits so you can max out your benefits by using that sort of eighteen month rule of thumb now obviously if you had a previous application you can sometimes reopen the previous application and go back even further but setting aside those situations we had a previous application as a big-picture rule if you're going to allege an earlier onset date going back more than eighteen months is probably not going to help you in terms of amount of cash you get in your lump sum now again I realize this is kind of technical and it's something that you probably want to talk to talk to your lawyer about but that's kind of a general picture but that will give you an idea of why people are getting these large lump sums because again they've maxed out their year prior to application and they've also got the two or three years or waiting after they've applied so that's where lump sums come from that sort of have a five month waiting period interfaces with the lump sum I think that I would urge you to talk to your lawyer about to get details as to how it affects you specifically you want to contact me about that or any issue with Social Security case evaluation happy to do that just contact me I've got an email address link here on the it's actually a website you can use it's a form on the screen here so please contact me that way if you found this useful this video useful please like it on Facebook give it a thumbs up on YouTube I mean leave me a comment on youtube those are always very much appreciated any questions of course let me know and again this is Jonathan Ginsberg and I hope again this was helpful and I hope to hear from you soon thanks a lot you

Channel: Social Security Disability videos

Views: 164,567

Keywords: social security disability, disability attorneys, Jonathan Ginsberg, ssdi, ssi, lump sum payments, social security hearing delays, past due benefits, Social Security Disability Insurance, Social Security Administration (Government Agency)

Id: EqxtsrSmxV0

Length: 6min 41sec (401 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2015