Welcome! This site is written for Social Security disability claimants, for their legal representatives, and for the network of people involved in the Social Security disability claim process. I hope you find it helpful.
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When you are awarded Social Security disability benefits, you do not receive benefits beginning on your onset date (which is the date you became disabled, and were not working).  Rather, there is a 5-month “waiting period” before benefits accrue.

As a practical matter, however, it is often a 6-month waiting period. This is because the

Social Security requires a medically determinable physical or mental impairment as the basis for a finding of disability. The “medically determinable” language is part of the definition of disability in the Social Security Act itself. See 42 U.S.C. 423(d)(1)(A).

The impairment(s) must result from anatomical, physiological, or psychological abnormalities that can be shown by medically

An important aspect of your past relevant work is the skills you may have learned on the job. In the context of Social Security disability, the touchstone for job skills is Social Security Ruling 82-41. That Ruling states:

A skill is knowledge of a work activity which requires the exercise of significant judgment that

Certain findings in a Social Security disability case are reserved to the Commissioner. Particularly, the determination of whether or not your are disabled is reserved to the Commissioner. See 20 C.F.R. 404.1520b(c)(3). Therefore, your doctor’s opinion that you are disabled in given no special significance by the SSA.

In fact, the heading for this

An “on the record” (OTR) request asks Social Security to grant your case on the record without a hearing. This request is for claims pending at the hearing level at the Office of Hearings Operations (OHO).

OTRs are favored by Social Security, because they save valuable resources. Why go though the hearing process if the

I have a hearing today with one of the new judges in Manchester, New Hampshire for a claim involving work under special conditions

Social Security’s regulations discuss work activity in 20 C.F.R. 404.1573, and work under “special conditions” is covered in 404.1573(c):

If your work is done under special conditions, we may find

Social Security classifies the physical exertion requirements of jobs as sedentary, light, medium, heavy and very heavy. See 20 C.F.R. 404.1567. Social Security gives those terms the same meaning as they have in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles.

The light exertional level involves lifting no more than 20 pounds at a time with