It might be frustratingly slow to wait for your Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) claim to be processed. It could take several weeks or months before you even get your first SSDI payment after submitting your application, as most SSDI beneficiaries can attest to. If you were eligible for disability benefits, but had to wait too long to get them, you may be eligible for back payments.
The date the Social Security Administration (SSA) establishes as the start of your disability will be used to calculate your back pay. This date is called the “established onset date.” A Disability Determination Services (DDS) examiner or an administrative law judge (ALJ) will review the medical information and decide when your disability began.
When Disability Benefits Are First Paid
When your SSDI payments begin depends on several circumstances, which include the date you became disabled, applied for benefits, and reached the obligatory five-month waiting period. (People who have been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are exempt from the five-month SSDI waiting period.)
Disability Onset Date
If you apply for Social Security disability benefits, the day you applied will be considered your “alleged onset date” (AOD). Your “established onset date” (EOD) will be the date you applied for Social Security benefits, provided that the Social Security Administration does not contest this date. The EOD is significant because it determines when you can start receiving benefits.
Waiting Period
The filing of an SSDI claim is subject to a statutory waiting period. Cash benefits from SSDI won’t begin until five months have passed since your disability began. Disability payments will begin on the first day of the sixth month.
The waiting period normally doesn’t postpone the beginning of your monthly payments because it is usually less than the amount of time required for an application to be authorized. However, it does have an impact on how much of the SSDI back pay you to receive.
You will not receive back payments for the five months you are required to wait before receiving disability benefits (this is because Social Security does not issue payments throughout the waiting period).
Date of Application
In most cases, retroactive payments will not extend further back than the 12 months immediately before your application. Social Security will only acknowledge a disability start date up to 17 months before the date of application (one year of back payments plus five months waiting time = 17 months).
This is the case even if your disability occurred many years ago. Another way to put it is that you will not be eligible for retroactive payments if you did not become disabled more than five months before your application date.
“Alleged Onset Date” vs. “Established Onset Date.”
The date you report to Social Security that you became disabled due to your symptoms is known as the Alleged Onset Date. A DDS examiner or a Social Security Administration administrative law judge decides the Established Onset Date.
The Social Security Administration will establish when your disability began based on the evidence presented, which will include medical documentation. Both the Alleged Onset Date and the Established Onset Date may be the same, however, this is not always the case.
Several possible explanations exist for why the Established Onset Date would differ from the Alleged Onset Date. For instance, a claimant who didn’t cut work or income on the Alleged Onset Date may do so afterward. Another possibility could be due to age. For example, a claimant who is closely approaching advanced age or advanced age, may have their alleged onset date moved to allow the claimant to “grid out.”
A further explanation could be a progressive decline in health over time. Keep in mind that just because you have been given a diagnosis of a debilitating condition does not mean that you automatically qualify for disability benefits from Social Security.
What Is Social Security Disability Back Pay?
All potential benefits from the Social Security administration during the time your application was being processed are factored into your back pay. The length of time it takes the Social Security Administration to complete your claim determines the amount of back pay to which you are entitled.
Your right to back payments from Social Security is limited to the period between your application and the start of your benefits.
If it just took a few months to process your claim, it may not be worthwhile trying to get back pay. However, if your SSDI claim was initially denied and you had to file an appeal, you could lose out on a significant amount of benefits.
Claims for Social Security Disability benefits can be appealed at one of four different levels. The duration of each appeal phase can average several months. If your appeal takes a long time, you may be owed a large sum of money in back pay from the Social Security Administration.
How the SSA Calculates SSDI Back Pay
The Social Security Administration will calculate your back payments based on the time between when you first applied for benefits and when they finally granted them. Your back pay amount is calculated differently depending on whether you received Social Security Disability Insurance payments, Supplemental Security Income benefits, or both.
If you were authorized for SSDI benefits, the Social Security Administration would pay you all of your back payments in one lump sum. Back payments are notoriously slow to come from the Social Security Administration. There is no way to know when you will get your back pay.
Applicants may get their back pay from the Social Security Administration even before they receive official notice that their claim has been approved. Back pay is sometimes issued after the recipient received their regular monthly payments.
Long delays in processing applications for disability benefits are unfortunately common.
Calculating the Monthly Benefit Amount
How much you will receive in disability back pay is determined by two factors: when you applied for disability and how much your monthly disability payments are. However, you may only receive disability payments for up to a year.
Social Security Disability Insurance benefits are calculated by a formula that takes into account the highest monthly wages or income you have earned over a period of 35 years. This amount is called your “Average Indexed Monthly Earnings” (AIME).
If you claimed disability benefits and it took 12 months for them to be accepted, you will be paid a lump sum equal to 12 months’ worth of benefits to make up for the time you were entitled to and did not receive them.
12-Month Limit
There is a limit of twelve months on how far back the SSDI back pay can be calculated.
For instance, if your Social Security Disability Insurance application was granted after a period of two years (which is very possible), you might think that you are entitled to 19 months of back pay from the SSA.
This is because the 24 months minus the 5-month mandatory period would equal 19. But there is a 12-month limit, so you can only get back pay for 12 months. You may still be entitled to up to 12 months of back pay for disability benefits if it takes more than a year for your claim to be processed or if it is first denied and must undergo review.
Even if you have waited longer than a year for your claim to be approved, you will only be entitled to a maximum of 12 months’ worth of back pay for a disability.
Calculating Total Amount of Back Pay
The Social Security Administration will calculate back pay after they have established the monthly SSDI benefits payment amount and the Established Onset Date.
If you become disabled in the middle of the month, the Social Security Administration will not consider that month for calculating your back pay because they only recognize entire calendar months.
On the other hand, the month in which you became disabled will count (which, again, according to the SSA, usually means the day you submitted your application).
There is no hard and fast rule about how much back pay you can get, but it will be determined by your average annual wages over the past 12 months. However, the maximum amount will be different for everyone.
What Makes Back Pay So Crucial?
It’s not always easy to get the Social Security Disability benefits you need and deserve. You must provide evidence that:
- You are blind or disabled according to the Social Security Administration’s “Blue Book” of disability designations
- you are unable to work for at least 12 months
- you have met the work credits and SGA criteria
Every year, the SSA raises disability payments through a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), which has an effect on how much total back pay applicants can receive since back pay is essentially overdue SSDI benefits. The exact amount of SSDI benefits is based on how much and how recently you’ve paid into Social Security.
It may not be worth it to pursue back pay if your claim was only delayed for a few months. On the other hand, if you needed to appeal the decision after your claim was denied, the benefits payments you did not receive may have piled up.
Applicants for Social Security disability benefits have four options to appeal a denial of their claim. It may take several months to complete each step of the appeals process. If your appeals process took a long time and you were then approved for benefits, you could collect a hefty back pay.
SSDI Back Pay vs Retroactive Pay
Back pay is the money you are owed due to a delay in processing your disability claim. As long as you were qualified on the date you submitted your application, the Social Security Administration will start sending you payments as soon as your application is processed.
If you apply for SSDI and it takes the Social Security Administration a long time to process your claim, you may be eligible for back pay. The substantial waiting time for processing SSDI applications makes this even more important. As a result of the holdup, practically all people who apply for SSDI will receive full compensation.
Unlike the delay in processing SSDI applications, however, retroactive payments are not issued to all applicants. If you were disabled before applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), you may be entitled to retroactive income.
You can think of retroactive payments as compensation for the time you waited before filing for SSDI, just as back payment is paid for the time the SSA took to process your application. If you apply for Social Security Disability Insurance and are found eligible, you may receive payments for up to a year before your application date.
Calculating Retroactive Back Pay
If the Social Security Administration agrees with your “Alleged Onset Date,” it means that your disability kept you from working before you applied for SSDI. When this happens, the SSA will also give retroactive pay, but it is not the same as SSDI back pay.
If you applied for SSDI and didn’t start getting benefits right away, you should get back pay to make up for any missed benefits payments. However, you will not be paid for the first five months, as this is the waiting period.
How Much Back Pay Can I Expect from Social Security Disability?
You can receive back pay from the SSA for up to a year before you file your claim. As a result, if you want to receive more than a year’s worth of back pay, you need to demonstrate that you’ve been disabled for at least 17 months before your application date (because of the five-month waiting period).
SSDI Back Pay Examples
The five-month waiting period for SSDI disability benefits is waived if the applicant has been disabled for at least twelve months before the date of application. The five-month waiting period effectively denies you your first five months of benefits without any justification.
The longer you wait for your case to be approved, the less of an impact this delay will have. We can use two instances to illustrate the 5-month waiting period:
If your claim is approved five months after you initially applied for benefits (five months for the approval procedure, minus five months for the waiting period), you will not be eligible for back pay.
After a year has passed since you first submitted your claim, if it is finally approved, you will receive seven months’ worth of back pay (twelve months minus the five-month waiting period).
If your claim is approved 24 months after you initially applied for it, you will receive back pay for a maximum of 12 months (although 24 months minus 5 months equals 19 months, the maximum amount of back pay is 12 months).
When Does Back Pay Start?
Back pay under SSDI is paid out in a lump sum, however, the timing of this payment is less certain. Back pay benefits have been known to be automatically transferred into a beneficiary’s bank account before the recipient is even informed that their disability claim has been granted. Regular benefits are sometimes paid before back pay, though occasionally the latter is given first.
The Social Security Administration may also make changes to your benefits under the windfall offset provisions. If you are eligible for both SSDI and SSI back pay, your back pay from SSDI will be counted as income when determining your SSI award amount.
SSDI back payments are a great way to support those who do not have the means to get through while their application is under review. However, it does come with certain conditions, and it’s helpful to know what those are.
