Tom Margenau has written a syndicated column giving advice on dealing with Social Security. Mostly I agree with him but the column is an example of how something that is good advice for most people can be misleading for others.
Margenau recounts complaints from Social Security employees about claimants who call in to file claims for widows benefits who haven't bothered to find their husband's Social Security number (SSN) before calling. He says to find it before calling. Great advice for most people but what if you can't find that number? What if you were separated and lack access to any of your late spouse's records? What if you're divorced but were married long enough to get surviving divorced spouse benefits? Are you barred from filing a claim since you lack the SSN? No, you can still file the claim. Social Security can look up the SSN. It's certainly better to save their time by finding the SSN if you can but if you can't Social Security is still prepared to help you file the claim. Margenau goes on to recommend that claimants have not only the SSN but also date of birth, date of marriage, date of divorce and date of death. I'm pretty sure that while it would be best to have this information that it's not strictly speaking necessary.
You have to understand that I'm constantly dealing with clients who have already procrastinated for months if not years before filing a Social Security disability claim. Often the reason given for the procrastination is that they were trying to get their information together to file a claim. The claimants often wait to reach out for help from someone like me until they're destitute. That's irrational but people who become disabled often act quite irrationally. Mental illness causes this irrationality but just the dislocation coming from what is often an abrupt change in one's life brings about mental confusion. I wish I had had the opportunity to insist that claimants get on with it before the wolf gets to the door. Dealing with desperate clients who are facing homelessness is wearing. You want to do something for them immediately but while Social Security can expedite adjudication in cases of homelessness or threatened homelessness, it still takes months for a case to proceed through the process. Please, don't encourage procrastination in filing Social Security claims.
9 comments:
If SSA wants people to use MYSSA, it needs to provide more information. "A medical decision has been made... Processing." Just doesn't cut it.
I agree not to wait to file.
But in order to get paid the widow or surviving divorce spouse is usually going to need the marriage certificate and divorce decree if they were divorced.
SSN--we can find it if the name and DOB are close but once in a while it can take quite a while to find it if the name is super common and the widow doesn't know the dead person's parents names, place of birth, etc.
I did see a case once where a widow was paid on the wrong deceased person's account where the name, date of birth and year of death were the same.
For the vast majority of people, we can find the number. Most of the difficult ones are where the person's SSN record has a misspelled name.
This might be state-to-state, but I'm pretty sure a person SSN is on the death certificate, in which one or two are given at the time around the funeral, usually (but probably not always) by the funeral home, or person/company that assists in the final arrangements and interment.
I also get frustrated with claimants who wait until they're out of coverage for social security disability. (I'm dealing with that now.) I understand when you're hurting and dealing with other things, it's easy to let the time slip away. You are right though, procrastination should be discouraged. Slow as the SSA claims process is, you have plenty time to gather whatever information is also needed.
The claims where the person comes in, says that they were married, don't recall exactly when, think it lasted 10 years, not sure, know their ex's name but again, don't know the ex's ssn, not sure about their dob or pob and have no proofs. There was a fire or a bad divorce or whatever. And then they sit there and not just expect you to pull this sh*t out of a hat but to do it quickly.
I get that for some portion of the population, this might be the best they can do, so yeah, you do teh legwork to get enough evidence to adjudicate the claim. But this kind of thing actually happens more than one would suspect. Some folks expect all that stuff to already exist and be on file, after all, we are the government, right? Distinctions about state, federal, local are to many meaningless.
To the folks that read Margenau's column (I remember him from his days at SSA), this is good advice. I bet you those folks are likely to be able to do all or most of what he suggests, after all, they are reading his column. The folks like I describe above, well, I bet as well that they don't read his column. They are not his target audience. And any self-help advice that he provides that helps anyone file and get adjudicated faster is one less claim sucking up resources needlessly.
Tim--if you called the local field office or even DDS, you'd get the same answer. Disability claim is still pending. If DDS sends the decision to DQB for review, you could get an idea of the decision but it's not final until approved so really the answer is still the same, still pending.
One could call the DDS examiner (names and phone numbers are on correspondence from DDS) and maybe get a better idea of what the reason for delay is.
The typical call I get asking about status, say the case is still at DDS, takes about 5 minutes. It's never enough to say it is still pending and you will hear when it is over. A short discussion will ensue about processing times, payment amounts, etc etc. It would be great if I had the time to do this without taking time away from processing other claims.
3:59 AM I was referring to the time after receiving the "approval" from the ALJ. The point is, there is not enough information on the website, so people call hoping to get an idea of when they are going to get their benefits. Even an ESTIMATE and info on what needs to be done might keep someone from calling. Even things like what day of the month to look for a payment would benefit people. I really don't see the point of the site if it doesn't provide meaningful information. When you have been waiting over 5 years, it's hard to accept, "You need to be patient!"
@Tim
SSA should probably advertise it more, but they do have a schedule of payments published at:
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10031-2019.pdf
Other misleading advice people are often given is that they need medical records before filing for disability
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