If You Lose Social Security Can You Regain It Again
Disability benefits are available to qualified recipients nether ii programs, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Income (SSDI). SSI is a means-tested program for people with disabilities who have very limited ways, only SSDI is an insurance program that is available to qualified workers with disabilities regardless of their resources. As of January 2018, some 13.eight million disabled workers and their dependents were receiving SSDI benefits from Social Security.
SSDI pays greenbacks benefits to people who are unable to work for a year or more because of a disability. Benefits keep until you lot are able to work over again on a regular footing, or until y'all accomplish retirement historic period. At that signal, the disability benefits automatically convert to retirement benefits, but the amount remains the same. After receiving SSDI benefits for two years, yous as well go eligible for health insurance coverage under Medicare. The disability program also includes a number of work incentives to ease your transition back to piece of work.
Who is eligible?
As with retirement benefits, you must have accumulated a certain number of work credits before you can qualify for SSDI disability benefits. Nonetheless, fewer credits are required to authorize for the disability program than for retirement. Yous can earn up to iv credits per twelvemonth of employment. How many credits you need to qualify for inability depends on the age you go disabled.
Before age 24 You lot may qualify if y'all have half-dozen credits earned in the iii-twelvemonth period catastrophe when your disability starts.
Age 24 to 31 You lot may qualify if y'all have credit for having worked half the time between age 21 and the time you go disabled. For example, if you become disabled at age 27, y'all would need credit for three years of work (12 credits) out of the previous six years (betwixt age 21 and historic period 27).
Age 31 or older In general, you lot will need to have accumulated the number of work credits shown in the chart below. Unless you are blind, at least 20 of the credits must take been earned in the x years immediately before you became disabled. If you are disabled past blindness, your work credits tin can be from any time subsequently 1936.
| Born After 1929, Become | Credits You Need: |
| 31 through 42 | xx |
| 44 | 22 |
| 46 | 24 |
| 48 | 26 |
| 50 | 28 |
| 52 | xxx |
| 54 | 32 |
| 56 | 34 |
| 58 | 36 |
| 60 | 38 |
| 62 or older | twoscore |
Certain members of your family unit may qualify for disability benefits on your work record should they become disabled. The corporeality of these benefits depends on your earnings record. These family members include:
- Your spouse who is age 62 or older, or any age if he or she is caring for your kid who is under age 16 or disabled and likewise receiving checks;
- Your widow or widower or divorced spouse (if the marriage lasted at least 10 years) historic period fifty or older should he or she go disabled. The disability must take started before your expiry or inside seven years after your death;
- Your unmarried son or daughter, including an adopted child, or, in some cases, a stepchild or grandchild.
When is a child entitled to disability benefits?
Children under age 18 who are disabled may be eligible for babyhood disability benefits if their parent has a disability or is deceased and was insured at the fourth dimension of death. An unmarried disabled child who is older than historic period xviii may exist eligible for benefits if the disability began before age 22. There is no upper age limit for childhood inability benefits.
In addition, unmarried children are entitled to child's insurance benefits on the Social Security tape of their disabled or deceased parents if the kid is under historic period 18 or betwixt age 18 and xix and a full-time educatee.
Who is "disabled"?
The Social Security Assistants uses a strict definition of disability. The program does not pay for partial inability or brusk-term inability. To qualify for benefits under SSDI, your disability must prevent you from doing whatever substantial gainful work, and information technology must terminal or be expected to final a year or to result in decease.
Despite the dominion that the disability must be expected to concluding a year, you should employ for benefits every bit soon as the status becomes disabling and your doctor is willing to state in writing that it is expected to last at least a twelvemonth. If it turns out that you recover sooner than expected, the SSA will not ask for its money back.
Older workers who become disabled tend to take an easier time having their claims approved. The SSA recognizes that it is more than difficult for older workers to exist retrained or to find new employment. In addition, the agency knows that a disabled worker who is, say, 60 years former and volition be receiving retirement benefits in a few years anyhow will cost it less in benefit outlays than a younger worker would.
The amount of disability payments
Every bit with other Social Security benefits, the corporeality of your inability payments is based on your age and your earnings record. The calculations are the same equally those for retirement benefits, although fewer piece of work credits are needed to authorize for benefits. You can obtain the SSA'southward guess of what your disability benefits would be by requesting Social Security Argument SSA-7004 (formerly known every bit the Personal Earnings and Benefit Judge Statement) from the SSA. You can request a copy by post or online by visiting this page on the SSA Web site:
Your spouse and minor or disabled children are also eligible for benefits. The most that you and your family unit tin can receive, however, is either 85 percent of your salary before you became disabled or 150 percent of your own inability benefit, whichever is less.
In virtually cases, the SSA allows you lot to supplement your benefits with a small corporeality of income (in 2021, upwardly to $one,310 a month or $ii,190 for the blind).
Beneficiaries who are eligible for more than one Social Security program -- say, disability and retirement benefits -- cannot collect more than than ane Social Security benefit simultaneously. If you are eligible for 2 benefit programs, you will receive the college of the two benefit amounts, but not both. The exception is Supplemental Security Income, which you lot tin receive while collecting benefits from another Social Security plan. However, you are permitted to collect inability payments from a private insurer, the Veterans Administration, or other source at the same time that you are receiving Social Security disability benefits. This holds true for workers' compensation benefits also, although your Social Security disability benefits will exist reduced if the full of your workers' bounty and disability benefits exceeds 80 percent of your average wages before yous became disabled.
Applying for benefits
Dissimilar applying for retirement benefits, the application procedure for disability benefits is complicated and time-consuming. Before y'all tin can collect benefits, you take to have been disabled for at least half-dozen months. Still, since the awarding process itself can take upwardly to six months, do not wait for the six-month period of disability to elapse earlier applying for benefits; practice it as soon as you become disabled.
The initial application is fabricated at your local Social Security Part. (Don't know where your local office is? Click here for the SSA'south Social Security Locator.) If the office determines that y'all have sufficient work credits to collect disability benefits, information technology will forward your awarding to a Inability Conclusion Services function in your state, which will make the decision about whether you meet the Social Security Assistants's criteria for inability. This decision is made by a medico and a disability evaluation specialist. They may request boosted medical records and/or request a medical evaluation or test. This exam will exist paid for by the SSA.
For more legal information and assistance for those with special needs, visit our SpecialNeedsAnswers Web site at www.specialneedsanswers.com. While some ElderLawAnswers attorneys practice in this area of the constabulary, all attorneys listed on SpecialNeedsAnswers devote a significant part of their practices to working with individuals with special needs and with their families to programme for the future.
Last Modified: 07/21/2021
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Source: https://www.elderlawanswers.com/social-security-disability-benefits-ssdi-12219