Calling the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) office is unlikely to help you understand whether or not you qualify for Social Security Disability. This is because when you call the SSA office you will be speaking with a service representative, who is not qualified to make a determination regarding a person’s disability. That is a decision […]

The Social Security Administration requires that you have earned enough “work credits” in the past  in order to be eligible to apply  for Social Security Disability benefits. What are work credits? When you work and pay Social Security taxes, you earn up to a maximum of four “credits” for each such year. The amount of earnings it […]

Did you know? Applying for and receiving Social Security Disability Benefits, ( when one is UNDER retirement age and unable to work for at least 12 months,) bestows perks from the Government that many people don’t know about. These include (if you win): *Wage Freeze: If there is a period of time you are not […]

There’s an insurance industry radio ad campaign currently running, containing the following warning: Don’t commit Workers’ Comp insurance fraud or you’ll end up in jail and you will shame your family. It’s clearly aimed at injured workers. I get it. What the public generally does NOT see is the other side of the coin…when insurance companies […]

Section 10 of the Workers’ Compensation law in New York State says, among other things,  that there shall be no liability for compensation “when the injury has been solely occasioned by intoxication from alcohol or a controlled substance………” It has long been the law that if someone gets injured on the job SOLELY because they […]

I’m a bit fussy when it comes to use of the English language. Misplaced apostrophes and bad grammar tend to drive me nutty. One mistake that is commonly made that is not linguistic in nature, however, is the common tendency to say “SSI” when one means “SSD” and vice versa.This is more a product of […]

My new hero (heroine?) is a scholar named Kathy A. Ruffing. She works for a group called “The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities” which is – according to its website- “(O)ne of the nation’s premier policy organizations working at the federal and state levels on fiscal policy and public programs that affect low- and […]

I get this question a lot. Whether it’s Workers’ Comp or Social Security Disability, clients are sometimes confused about whether going back to work is “bad” or can somehow “hurt” their case. So let me be clear: in my opinion it’s almost always better to go back to work, if you can, rather than depend […]