Submitting a Social Security Disability Appeal is usually Good Advice

How to prove you are disabled
and win disability benefits

If you have filed a claim for social security disability (SSD) only to have it denied, your best bet, in most circumstances, is to appeal the decision before an administrative judge, rather than filing a new SSD claim.

There are two main reasons why it is generally advisable to request a hearing before a judge rather than file a new SSD claim:

1) If you file a new claim, you will have to go through the entire initial claims process again, including being assigned a claims representative (CR) and disability examiner, filing a request for reconsideration, receiving a denial of the reconsideration, and, finally, requesting and getting a date set for your hearing. In fact, it could be months or even years before you have the chance to appear before a judge again, and that is not good, because--

2) a judge is statistically more likely to approve a social security disability claim than the state disability agency (where claims and requests for reconsideration are decided, or adjudicated). In other words, it is in your best interest, if your claim has been denied, to appear in front of a judge at the first opportunity.

There is one exception to this rule, and that is in a case in which a disability application has been denied on “technical” grounds, i.e., your annual income/earnings were too much to qualify you for disability, and you were therefore disqualified from the outset. In this scenario, no time is lost by filing a new claim, since the claim never really got to the point in which medical records and or work history was considered.

To sum it up, if your claim and request for reconsideration have been denied by the state disability agency handling your case (in most states its referred to as DDS, or disability determination services, the bureau of disability determination, or even the Division of Disability Determination), your next best step is almost always to request a hearing before an administrative judge. Not only will you save yourself months, perhaps even years, of time, but you are also more likely to receive a favorable outcome on your case.

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Questions and Answers about Social Security Disability and SSI Disability

The Qualification Criteria for Social Security Disability

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SSD and SSI are Federal Programs

The title II Social Security Disability and title 16 SSI Disability programs operate under federal guidelines and, therefore, the program requirements--medical and non-medical--apply to all states:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Recent approval and denial statistics for various states can be viewed here:

Social Security Disability, SSI Approval and Denial Statistics by state

Special Section: Disability Lawyers and unnecessary claim denials