Why Am I Not Getting Disability Benefits Back Pay?
You look forward to monthly payments from Social Security Disability. And there may be an bonus once your disability benefits application is approved: You can get a lump sum of back pay, too.
Sometimes, it’s a substantial amount, especially when you’ve been waiting a long time for benefits. The idea of back benefits is to compensate you for the months, or longer, that you were eligible for disability benefits but Social Security hadn’t answered you yet.
But you could be disappointed—because not everyone is eligible for back pay.
Here are the basic rules to Social Security Disability back pay
- You can’t receive back pay for any period before the date Social Security officially decided you first had a disability that qualifies for benefits.
- If you’re getting Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits, there is also a built-in, five-month waiting period after the date your disability officially began. So, you have to subtract those five months from your back pay.
- For SSDI, there is a limit on how much back pay Social Security will award. It can stretch back no more than one year before you filed your disability claim.
- If you’re getting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, the furthest back Social Security will pay is the first month after the month you filed your claim, unless you file on the first day of the month.
It’s always a good idea to start your disability application as soon as you realize you can’t work because of your health, partly to start the clock on future back pay as soon as possible.
Social Security Disability is a complicated program, sometimes even after you win benefits. At Barnes Disability Advocates, our Utah disability lawyers work to make the process easier to deal with and understand.
Let’s look at some examples of how Social Security Disability back benefits work, so you can get a better idea of what to expect.
Scenario 1: Factoring in the 5-Month Wait for Social Security Disability Back Benefits
Let’s say you filed for both SSDI and SSI on Feb. 1, 2024.
Then it took a year, until Feb. 1, 2025, for Social Security to decide you have a qualifying medical impairment. And when they made that decision, they said it was June 15, 2023, when your health problems first became severe enough that you couldn’t work.
Here’s how they would calculate the start date of your back pay.
SSDI: With your initial eligibility date on June 15, 2023, the month of June wasn’t a full month, so they don’t calculate it as a part of your required five-month waiting period. The five months you have to wait are July, August, September, October, and November. Your back pay would date to December 2023 and cover the period through your approval of benefits in February 2025.
SSI: Your back pay wouldn’t start until Feb. 1, 2024, the date you filed for disability benefits, even though they believe that your disability started in June 2023.
Scenario 2: When You’ve Had Your Qualifying Disability for Longer
We will use almost the same scenario as before, except let’s say Social Security found the date that your disability qualified for benefits was June 15, 2022, a year earlier than the first example.
But let’s say you still filed your SSDI and SSI application in February 2024.
SSDI: June still isn’t considered a full month, so you wait out July, August, September, October, and November again, but this time in 2022. However, December 2022 is more than a year before your filing date, and your back benefits can’t go past a year before your filing date. So, the start date of your back pay calculation would be February 2023.
SSI: There is no change. Your back pay would still start from February 2024 because with SSI the furthest it can go is the date you filed for disability if you file on the first day of the month.
Scenario 3: When Your Social Security Disability Back Pay Is Less
Again, you filed for SSDI and SSI on Feb. 1, 2024, but this time a year later on Feb. 1, 2025, they found that the date you reached the point where you qualified for disability benefits was AFTER you applied. Social Security set your eligibility date as June 15, 2024.
SSDI: June still isn’t considered a full month when your decision comes in the middle of it, so you have to remove July, August, September, October and November from the period when you were owed benefits. Your back pay would date to December 2024, not long before your benefits approval in February 2025 and therefore a smaller payment.
SSI: Your SSI would date back to July 2024, the first full month after the date Social Security found you “disabled” according to their definition, which is still after your filing date
Scenario 4: When You Don’t Get Any Social Security Disability Back Benefits
You have too many assets to apply for SSI, so you only applied for SSDI.
Again, your filing date was February 1, 2024, and Social Security approved your clam on February 1, 2025, but they found the date you first become eligible due to work-stopping health problems was actually Nov. 20, 2024.
In this case, November isn’t considered a full month, so your SSDI waiting period would be December, January, February, March, and April before your payments started.
This means that your payments wouldn’t begin until May 2025, right as the automatic five-month waiting period ends. You have no waiting time that applies to back pay. In this scenario, you would receive no back pay. You would get regular, monthly disability payments moving forward.
But you can appeal this. You can argue for a different onset date of your disability. The Utah disability attorneys at Barnes Disability Advocates help people figure out what to do.
We can help you weigh the benefits of getting more back pay against the risk of appealing Social Security’s decision, which exposes you to getting denied benefits when they review your claim again at the next step in the appeals process.
Tricky Situations with How Back Pay Works in Social Security Disability
Even though they seem complicated, we’ve only covered the basic scenarios. Here are some more things that can interfere with your back pay.
- Your SSDI payments are too high for you to be eligible for SSI, and therefore you receive no SSI at all, let alone any back pay for it. SSI payments require you to have extremely minimal financial resources, so it’s common for SSDI to cause you to lose SSI. If we apply this to Scenario 3, which had a shorter window of back pay, you could receive five months of SSI back pay before the start of your SSDI back pay. That would be a one-time payment, and you would not receive any SSI after that.
- You may owe child support. The Utah Office of Recovery Services or (ORS) can garnish your back pay to cover child support.
- You may have received General Assistance from the Utah Department of Workforce Services during the time that you were found to have a disability and owe them back pay from your SSI payments. This does not come out of SSDI back pay. ORS, which can garnish benefits for child support, also gathers these payments.
- You may have received worker’s compensation money through a settlement or weekly payments from an injury at work. Social Security can factor in those funds to reduce your back pay. If you’ve ever had a worker’s comp case, even if you only received medical care from them, Social Security will ask you to provide proof of the benefits you received from this other source before they release your Social Security Disability back pay.
- The last thing that will reduce your back pay is your attorney fee. Social Security Disability lawyers who help you win benefits are paid from your back pay. Almost all disability attorneys are paid based on a contingency fee, meaning they only collect a fee when they win benefits for you. Upon helping you win your claim, your disability attorney is entitled to 25% of your back pay up to a federal maximum. Currently, that federal maximum is $9,200 (last increased in 2024). This means that if 25% of your back pay equals $10,000, your disability attorney would still only be paid $9,200.
If you receive a Notice of Award that says something is reducing your back pay and you aren’t sure why, show it to us at Barnes Disability Advocates. We can provide answers. And if Social Security got your back pay amount wrong, we can help you appeal the decision.
Back benefits can be a huge financial relief as you start to receive disability payments. They may help you catch up with expenses that have accumulated since you had to stop working. They can help you start a new chapter as you deal with health issues.
Make sure to protect your rights and get everything you’re entitled to receive.
