The Law Offices of Deborah F. Maury

Social Security Overview: Common Questions and Answers

What types of benefit programs are available?
There are two main types of disability benefits through Social Security. One type bases benefits on your work record and is commonly referred to as Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) claim. The other, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), is based on family income and assets. SSI can supplement DIB benefits when they do not meet the minimum financial threshold, and it can provide benefits to people who have never worked or have not worked enough to be eligible for benefits based on their past work record. In addition, there are provisions within Social Security for disabled children and widows/widowers.

How do I qualify for these benefits?
In order to be considered disabled, you must be suffering from an impairment or combination of impairments which severely limits your ability to work on a full-time basis to the extent that there is not a significant number of jobs which you retain the “residual functional capacity” to perform. This condition must last or be expected to last at least one year, or be expected to result in death. In making this determination, Social Security will take into account such factors as your age, education and past work experience. Social Security does not provide for payment for temporary disabilities of less than one-year duration.

In addition to your medical condition, each program has other criteria that must be met. For example, Supplemental Security Income is based, in part, on the finances of the entire household, much in the same way that food stamps are. With this program, it is entirely possible to be found medically disabled but not financially eligible for the program.

What is my date-last-insured and why is it important?
For most people, it is most advantageous to be found eligible for DIB payments on their own work record. This is because these payments are generally higher than those made under the SSI program, and because they are not effected by other considerations such as spouse’s income which can disqualify a person from collecting SSI. Generally, in order to be eligible for this program, an adult must have worked (and paid Social Security taxes) twenty calendar quarters out of the past forty (that is, five years out of the past ten) at a level considered by the Social Security Administration to be “substantial gainful employment.” If this requirement is met, then the person is said to be “insured” for purposes of disability. To illustrate, a worker who has been employed steadily for at least the past five years and quits due to a disability on January 1, 1994, would have a date-last-insured of January 1999.

For more information, log onto http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disability/