Have you been granted Social Security
Disability benefits, but not received your retroactive benefits yet? You are not
alone. We have been seeing significant delays when it comes to the release of
retroactive benefits by the Social Security Administration.
Retroactive benefits are the benefits that accrue while a claimant waits for his/her Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security Income case to be granted. On average, claimants would start their monthly benefits and then the retroactive benefits would be released within three months that the monthly benefit commenced. However, we have been seeing extreme delays in the release of these retroactive benefits over the last year or so.
Some local Social Security offices are
estimating that it is taking certain branches of the payment center an additional
eight to twelve months to release these retroactive benefits. The excuse that is
being cited is that the payment centers are extremely backlogged and are
understaffed. Thus, Social Security is concentrating on just meeting the
demands of getting the monthly benefit started as the first priority. Processing
the retroactive benefits is being pushed on to the back burner.
Social Security did tell me that if a
claimant could prove a “dire need” situation, then the Administration would try
to release the retroactive benefits sooner. For example, retroactive benefits may
be released sooner if a claimant can show that he/she lacks food and is unable
to obtain it, lacks critical medication or medical treatment, or lacks shelter.
A claimant can submit eviction notices, foreclosure notices, shut-off notices,
and other items to substantiate the claim that his/her case meets the “dire
need” standard to expedite the retroactive benefit processing. Claimants who
also suffer from terminal illnesses or are designated “wounded warriors” from
active duty injuries may also see their retroactive benefits processed more quickly
than other beneficiaries.
We wish we could guarantee that your
retroactive benefits will be released timely. However, that is not always the
case. Attorneys are not even able to contact the payment centers directly. Like
claimants, we must use the local Social Security offices as liaisons to the
payment centers, as Social Security does not make their payment centers’ phone
numbers public.
We have to put pressure on the local Social
Security offices to encourage them to intervene with the payment center on our
clients’ behalves. Managers at the local Social Security offices will send “manager
to manager” status inquires to the various payment centers when retroactive
benefits haven’t been released after an exorbitant amount of time. Therefore, we
can make some leeway in retroactive benefits processing times if we have cooperative
managers at the Social Security Administration’s local level. We do hope that timeframes
will improve at all branches of Social Security over the next several years,
but it would require that Social Security hire more employees to serve the
large number of Social Security applicants and recipients. That does not seem likely under the current
Administration.
Got a
question about SSDI or SSI that you need us to answer? Please check out our
website at www.westcoastdisability.com . We try to
provide you with helpful information on our website that will allow you to
successfully navigate the Social Security Disability process. Also, feel free
to email me your questions at megan@westcoastdisability.com or call me at (800)
459-3017 x 103.
