It is unfortunate, but a common scenario with many Social Security disability applicants is that they find out that they are ineligible to receive Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) before a claim really gets going, no matter why types of potential disabilities an applicant has.
Before an applicant can even get the Social Security Administration to make a medical decision on their case they must first meet the technical requirements of either the DIB or Supplemental Security Insurance program.
Clients at our law office get letters in the mail informing that although they have properly submitted an application for DIB, no medical decision was made because “you have not worked long enough or more recent enough.” Let’s deal with these two issues separately.
First, on the “you have not worked long enough” issue, you have to have enough work credits consistent with your age to have “worked long enough” to be eligible for DIB. When a worker earns $1,200 worth of earnings they earn a work credit. A total of $4,800 earned in a year would give the worker a maximum of four work credits in a year. The older you are, the more work credits are required to be eligible for the DIB program. Below is the number of work credits needed to be eligible based on age.
AGE CREDITS NEEDED YEARS OF WORK
31-42 20 5
44 22 5.5
46 24 6
48 26 6.5
50 28 7
52 30 7.5
54 32 8
56 34 8.5
58 36 9
60 38 9.5
62 + 40 10
The second issue is “you have not worked more recent enough.” This is a pitfall many people who apply for DIB do not realize. For example, if from age 20 you worked for 20 years, but had to stop working at age 40 because you became disabled, but didn’t decide to apply for benefits until age 50, you would not meet the technical requirements of the program. The easy way to remember the rule is that you have to have worked at least five out of the last 10 years to be eligible for DIB. Another issue some workers have is that for some reason they were not paying Social Security taxes when working. To be eligible for the DIB program you must be paying Social Security taxes to develop work credits. This is a danger to those who may be doing contract work or who are self employed. Many times these people believe that just because they are working and paying federal and state income taxes that they are also paying Social Security taxes, but many times this is not the case.
Those who are interested in learning whether they have enough work credits to be eligible for DIB can contact their Social Security office or call Social Security toll-free at 800-772-1213.
