My recollection is that some years ago there was a program by which the Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA), as it was known then (and as I hope it will eventually be known again) had a program to pre-notify Social Security's payment centers when an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) was about to issue a decision approving a Social Security disability claim, so that implementation could begin even while the ALJ's office was still writing the decision.
I was under the impression that pre-notification had been quietly dropped many years ago. At least I had seen no evidence that it still existed. However, today I received an attorney fee payment less than a week after I received a favorable decision from an ALJ -- and, no, there was no delay in my receiving the ALJ decision. Given the time frames involved in getting a check issued, I find it hard to believe that the ALJ decision could have been implemented that quickly unless there was pre-notification.
Did the pre-notification of ALJ decisions never really end? Has it been re-implemented?
I was under the impression that pre-notification had been quietly dropped many years ago. At least I had seen no evidence that it still existed. However, today I received an attorney fee payment less than a week after I received a favorable decision from an ALJ -- and, no, there was no delay in my receiving the ALJ decision. Given the time frames involved in getting a check issued, I find it hard to believe that the ALJ decision could have been implemented that quickly unless there was pre-notification.
Did the pre-notification of ALJ decisions never really end? Has it been re-implemented?
3 comments:
Given the fact that the payment center "lost" my approval letter. I would not guarantee this to be a common practice as they acknowledged that they got the letter, then over 6 months later acknowledged they "lost" it after constant calls, but never did start working on it till very recently.
I do suppose it is not out of the realm of possibility that it has been reimplemented with the new commissioner, as my issues date back before he started his term.
If all of the necessary information was previously entered on the computer (which doesn't happen often in disability cases) then input of the ALJ decision would automatically cause the claim to "go to pay" without human intervention. In that situation, it is quite possible that the check could be received within days of the input of the favorable decision.
Some years ago there was indeed a form we received in PC7 when a case was deemed likely to be an allowance. We were supposed to begin development for children's claims, etc in these cases. It didn't work because the DO's would often refuse to get the children's claims until the ALJ actually allowed the case.
Anyway the procedure was quietly dropped years ago.
Now the reason you got your check so quickly, for some reason we are receiving very "young" ALJ awards from ODAR sometimes just a couple of weeks old. If it can go thru MCS you would get your check very quickly.
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