If you have won your Social Security Disability case, congratulations! There are two letters you now will wait to receive in the mail. The first will be that favorable decision, either from the Disability Determination Services, the Administrative Law Judge, or even possibly the Appeals Council.
Once you receive the favorable decision, then comes the Notice of Award. If you only have either an SSDI or SSI claim (not both), you will only receive one Notice of Award. That Notice of Award will outline your back-due benefits, your ongoing monthly benefit amount, and how those amounts are calculated.
If you have a concurrent case, if you had a claim for both SSD and SSI, you should receive two different Notice of Awards: one for SSDI benefits and one for SSI benefits.
While the Notice of Award usually comes several weeks after the favorable decision, the exact timing depends on many factors, including the workload of the individual assigned to your specific case. For SSI cases, it can also depend on your own responsiveness as there is often additional information needed to process your Notice of Award in SSI cases.
Once your Notice of Award has been written, you will shortly receive your back due benefits (if any are owed). Social Security tends to pay those via direct deposit, but occasionally they do send a paper check in the mail. Once the Notice of Award has been issued, you will start to receive your monthly benefits in accordance with the payment schedule.
As an extra tip, once you receive your favorable decision and the Notice of Award, don’t stop treating for the conditions that you were found disabled for as Social Security does often pull cases for continuing disability reviews and will need to see evidence of ongoing medical treatment for that continuing disability review.
Again, if you have been approved for SSD or SSI benefits, congratulations! If you’re watching this video before being approved and have questions about how an attorney can help you, feel free to reach out.
