Car Accidents and Lawyers to Reduce Stress

Posted on: 2 September 2015

Social Security disability fraud has been a hot news item in the last couple of years. Highly publicized cases in New York (involving SSA fraud by former police officers and firefighters) and in Kentucky (in which an Administrative Law Judge conspired with an attorney to approve hundreds of suspect claims) have left many legitimate Social Security claimants feeling like they're under an unfair microscope. How can you reduce your chances of being unfairly suspected of trying to cheat the system when you file for benefits? Follow these two steps.

1.) Be careful about hiring an attorney who will only use specific doctors.

Having a doctor who is supportive of your bid for Social Security benefits is probably the most important thing that you can do to increase the odds of winning your case. Social Security is required to give your own physician's opinion a great deal of weight when deciding your claim. After all, who is in a better position to give an opinion on your case than the doctor or doctors who see you the most often?

It may be necessary for your attorney to send you to another doctor, like a specialist or someone who is familiar with the type of paperwork that Social Security wants doctors to fill out when they request information (called a residual functional capacity assessment or RFC) about your ability to work or otherwise handle day-to-day life. There's nothing wrong with that.

Not every doctor is familiar with these forms or is even willing to complete them. Some may not even be aware of the extensive examination that's often required to answer all of the questions.

However, if an attorney wants you to see a doctor that he or she has a close working connection with and encourages you to withhold the name of your regularly treating physician from your SSA application, think carefully about the possible ramifications.

Social Security only knows to contact the medical sources that you identify as part of your treating sources. If you leave off your regular treating physician and only include the name of the physician your attorney has treating you, Social Security may eventually come to find out and question why you attempted to hide your other treating sources. It could look like you and the attorney and doctor are attempting to rig the information in your file so that any information that's less than favorable to your case is hidden.

2.) Look for an attorney that asks you a lot of questions before accepting your case.

Good SSA lawyers know they can't make promises. However, they aren't going to take cases they don't think they can win, because they don't get paid unless you win your case.

The odds are good that if you're sitting in an attorney's office talking about your SSA claim, you've already been denied at least once already. A good SSA lawyer is going to want to understand why your case was denied before he or she takes your case. Expect to answer a lot of questions about your condition and how it affects your ability to work and function from day to day.

An interview with a lawyer should be fairly intensive, with about as many questions as you'd expect if you were sitting in the SSA office. The attorney should be able to identify the basic weaknesses of your case and discuss how to overcome them during your appeals process.

Make sure that you understand the strategy and that you're comfortable that it relies on your attorney's skill to demonstrate the flaws in SSA's reasoning or some other legitimate avenue of dispute.

SSA fraud has become the subject of media hype and it has, unfortunately, tainted the process for people who are legitimately disabled and their attorneys. By taking these two steps, however, you can avoid getting tangled up in something that could end up hurting your case in the long-run.

For professional legal help, contact a law firm such as Horn & Kelley, PC Attorneys at Law.