I got the notice of award letter I've heard people talking about. It cleared up some things I was confused about and may be informative to others. I have a pretty good aptitude for understand legal and business documents but SSA letters can be very confusing. I was thinking that the back pay thing was capped at 12 months. It isn't. The judge declared my disability began in 2008 but they are paying me from September 2011. That was when I filed for SSDI. A few amusing and confusing bits from the 2 letters I've gotten recently.
The first letter, from SSD ODAR and written by the ALJ was basically the judge's decision and the information he used to form his opinion and make a judgement. I felt pretty crazy after reading it
It also informed me that I was covered by medicare as of 2013
That was kind of cleared up in the new letter. I can get coverage for 2013 if I pay the 10 or so $104 monthly premiums dating from my coverage eligibility... think I'll pass
There was a monetary figure that seemed to be back pay that was exactly equal to 7 months pay. I thought I'd gotten the old 5 month deduction thing. Apparently not. In the Notice of award was a much better monetary figure.
Another odd thing was the amount of back pay due me was in the "Information about Representative's Fee" paragraph.
Then 5 pages later there was a paragraph entitled "Why We Cannot Pay Past Benefits." Benefits due for September 2011 through June 2014.... $.00
Then a really odd sentence. Amount we must subtract because of
That's it... it just stops there. Under that is typed "This equals........ $00.00"
Odd hmm? I called SSA and waited over an hour to talk to a rep.
He told me that according to their records the figure mentioned in that first para is correct but he would put in an inquiry
I also asked the obvious question... when do I get it
He told me the average time is 45 days after you receive your first monthly payment.
If this isn't informative in a helpful way it will at least give the uninformed an idea of how confusing the whole thing is. I suppose part of that is due to the enormity of the system. One of the endlessly repeating messages while I was on hold was "we're sorry for the wait but please remember that we are serving fifty million people