When you file for Social Security disability, you will be asked to identify the date you contend that you became disabled. This date is known as your Alleged Onset Date (abbreviated by Social Security as your AOD).
Social Security does not offer much guidance as to what this date should be. I have had clients tell me that in telephone applications, the SSA phone operator will suggest a date. Other clients pick a date that corresponds to the date their illness was diagnosed or the date that they stopped working.
In general, your Alleged Onset Date should be the date when your medical or mental health condition created so many impediments to your ability to function at a job that you had to stop working.
I generally advise my clients to choose a date after they stop working. Remember that Social Security defines disability as the inability to engage in substantial gainful activity – if you are working and earning money, the presumption will be that you are engaged in substantial activity. In other words, you cannot be working and disabled at the same time.
What About Part Time Work or Work with Special Considerations?
In theory, you could qualify for disability if your work is not substantial, or if you are getting special considerations that others might not get. For example, you may be a 20 year employee at a company where the owner has created a special position that allows you to remain on the payroll but includes extra help from co-workers or a unique job description.
Several years ago, this argument would sometimes work but in the current climate, I am finding that judges are just not willing to award disability benefits to a claimant for a time period when that claimant is earning money. I like to tell my clients that Social Security decision makers see things in black and white – either you disabled or you are not. You either have the capacity to work or you do not. If you try to hedge your bets you will probably lose.
Don’t Rely on Your Diagnosis Date
I also encourage my clients not to focus on the date of their diagnosis. It does not matter if you were diagnosed with heart failure, or fibromyalgia or a herniated disc 6 years ago if you continued working. Instead focus on the date that your condition reached a level where you had to stop working.
Job Going Away vs. Unable to Continue
You also need to be careful about choosing your last day of work as your onset date if you stopped working because your company went out of business or laid off workers for lack of business. In these cases, the judge will wonder if you could have continued working for weeks, months or years had your job remained stable.
In my experience it is a good practice to tie your onset date to a medical event such as
- a diagnosis date
- a medical crisis (stroke, heart attack, suicide attempt, etc.)
- a hospitalization
- a termination for excessive absences
and
choose a date that is after you last worked.
You will come across as much more credible if you choose an onset date that logically arises from the decline in your health as opposed to a date that seems more connected with your disability application.
Can you change your onset date after you start your case? Yes, and I’ll discuss that issue in a future blog post.
Steven Jackson says
I wonder if my claim is that one in a million claim where everything that could have gone wrong did. The biggest obstacle in my claim is an issue with an incorrect AOD (not by my own fault, but because of the inept local SSA employee who mistakenly entered an incorrect AOD on my claim, and now almost 3 years of appeals, that AOD was never corrected).
On my application, I submitted my AOD as Sept. 2001, but the SSA employee entered Nov 2009 (which was simply my protective filing date). Even after submitting requests to correct this error through the local SSA office, DDS, ODAR, my first lawyer, the ALJ, the AC, and my second lawyer, my incorrect AOD was STILL not corrected by the time of my second ALJ hearing. My last date insured is Dec 2006, so the mere fact they had my AOD as 3 years PAST my date last insured should have thrown up red flags.
I submitted my own request for review to the AC after my first lawyer withdrew his representation after the first ALJ hearing. The AC remanded my claim while instructing the ALJ to correct my AOD to Sept 2001 and even noted how “crucial” this error was. One would think after all thing considered my worries were over, nope!
When I received my notice of hearing for the second ALJ hearing, it included a copy of the notice the medical examiner was to receive. There was a note that read “your testimony will cover Nov 2009 to current”. I once again submitted a complaint to the ODAR about this and expressed my concerns that it appeared to me the medical examiner wasn’t going to be given access to the necessary evidence. ODAR turned my complaint into an exhibit and placed it with my other evidence.
The first few words out of the ALJ’s mouth at the beginning of the second ALJ hearing was in reference to my AOD as Nov 2009! I almost flipped! Did my second lawyer object to this? Barely, but he did not make any mention to all the previous errors of record that incorrect AOD caused. EACH denial up to this point was solely based because of the incorrect AOD. Not only was the medical examiner testifying based upon very limited access, he didn’t even appear in person. The ALJ allowed him to testify via telephone with no prior notice. Did my lawyer object to this? Nope. Did my lawyer object to the fact this medical expert is ONLY qualified as a child psychiatrist (when my impairment is in the arthritis family)? Nope! My lawyer argued NOTHING! 10 minutes of the mumbling testimony from this deaf medical expert and my hearing was over. It all happened so fast.
So, I guess the lesson is: well, I honestly don’t think there is anything anyone can learn from this story because it is absolutely ridiculous and wreaks of ineptness of the parts of many people. Even though I was somehow able to talk my lawyer into submitting an appeal, I’m still just beside myself at the shear lack of due process I have received throughout my claim. The above issues barely scratch the surface with all the other unbelievable issues I have gone through. In all my readings, research of other cases, and people I have talked to online, no one has ever heard of such a claim for disability with such an apparent sabotage of fairness.
I didn’t mean to rant beyond talking about my AOD issue, but everything is so entangled with that one issue, it’s impossible to talk about just that one thing. So for me, it didn’t even matter what date I submitted for my AOD because the SSA just threw it out the window anyway.