Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Sharon, if someone is getting social security benefits, can they work at all or what if
they have investment property or making money in the stock market? There's a big difference
between working and making money passably in investment property or the stock market.
That's not going to count against you, but if you are actively physically working, what
most people would think of is W-2 income. You can work a little bit, but there's very
strict rules on that, and so here's how it works. Social security will look at a rolling
five year period, and if they see during that five year period a total of nine months where
you've earned $750 per month or more gross, so that's not much, they will consider that
you've exhausted what they call your trial work period and at that point you should be
able to go back to work. Now we're not talking about nine consecutive months, we're talking
about nine months total over a 5 year period. So can you work? Yes. Can you work a lot?
No, you can't. You can't earn very much. Now realistically, if you reach the point of going
back to full time work, then you need to do that, because there's a point where social
security will get your medical records and they will see that you can go back to work,
but for most people that not going to be the case. Someone is getting social security benefits
and they and their doctor think its appropriate to try to get back into the workforce, how
does that work? So that they don't criminally impair their benefit stream. You can try,
you can try, and their is a program called ticket to work that the social security administration
runs and through that program you can try for a limited period of time without losing
your benefits and see how you do, it's pretty limited though, it's less then nine months.
See how you do, and if you're ok, if you can tolerate it, and continue to work and you
would do that and stop your disability. And actually thats a great situation to be productive
cause you're going to make more money presumably. Absolutely, absolutely. I think that's a big
misconception about social security disability. It's been received a lot of negative publicity
as the middle class alternative to welfare, which is really really insulting. People don't
realize, you don't get rich off of social security disability. Like I said, at most,
you might get $2000 a month, and that's from people who are highly productive, high earners.
Most people that I deal with would like to talk to anybody in the world but me. They
would much rather be at work talking to their boss, then talking to a disability lawyer,
so I think all the negative publicity has done a real disservice to people who are truly
injured and unable to work. It's probably made the process even longer, judges are more
careful, examiners are more conservative probably - there's no question of that. Absolutely,
in the last 18 months I have seen that across the board in all jurisdictions where I handle
cases, that the hill you're climbing is even higher. It's even tougher. They're looking
for even more evidence then before because, in part because I believe, of all the negative
publicity. In my practice representing people who have claims under their long term disability
insurance policies, their contracts, I see a lot of folks with fibromyalgia, with chronic
fatigue, with symptoms and restrictions from Lyme's disease and things like that. We find
these case to be rarely difficult. Is it the same in the social security world? Yes it
is, probably for the same reasons you're dealing with. Some of these conditions are little,
what I'll call fuzzy. There's some degree of controversy in the medical community about
how legitimate they are or how severe they are and we find in trying to find sufficient
medical evidence to back up our claim, that can be very difficult. So, I've won cases
that've involved those conditions, generally, it's not just those conditions however that
we're dealing with. Generally there's a variety of things going on with the client, that's
one part of it. And then the side effects of the medications they may be taking for
those conditions that can be an awful awful experience for the person who's suffering.
Yes. The sick person no question, yes yes, but we find they are difficult. They're a
lot more difficult because they symptoms are subjective as opposed to our clients who have
herniated disks, - A Ct scan of cancer, and their back surgery has failed, and you can
see on the MRI, you can see what the problem is. It's very objective. When you're dealing
with any kind of case that is subjective like fatigue or chronic pain, not related say to
back, where you can see an Xray or an MRI where you're just dealing with the subjective
symptoms, that does make it that much harder to be successful in the case.
Well Sharon, thanks for being on the program, once again, my guest today is Sharon Christie,
a social security disability attorney. Sharon is the author of the unofficial guide to social
security disability claims, Sharon tell us once again how people can find out more about
you and more importantly get a copy of your free book. Sure, just go to my website, www.SharonChristielaw.com
or to get a copy of the book, you can order it on the website or you can call my office:
410 823 8200. Alright, thanks for being with us. Thanks Ben!