WHY ARE YOU DISABLED?

To win your Social Security disability case, it is important to explain why you are disabled.

There are two parts to being able to work:

1.  Being able to do basic work related activities, such as standing, walking, pushing, pulling, stooping, kneeling, balancing, reaching, handling, and lifting and carrying.

2.  Being able to sustain and maintain full-time work.

At your hearing, you must show the judge that you have a significant limitation in performing the activities of work.  These limitations must result from one or more medical impairments that have lasted for at least twelve straight months. These impairments must be evident in your medical records. Depending on your age, you must show that your limitations of function prevent you from doing work at all exertion categories--from heavy work to sedentary work.

Being able to sustain and maintain full-time work is different.  If you would be absent from work excessively because of a medical condition, you are not able to sustain work.  The same is true if your impairment would keep you off task or unfocused for a substantial part of the workday.

A person who will be absent 2 or 3 days a month can't sustain a job very long.  Someone who is off task due to pain or psychological stress more than about 10 percent of the time cannot maintain work.

Winning a disability case is complicated.  First, you gather the medical evidence.  Next, you analyze it to see what the medically determinable impairments are.  Then, you find out what restrictions the impairments pose on work related activity. Then, find out how the regulations support the proposition that you cannot work. At the end, you have a legal theory of the case, which, hopefully, will win your benefits.