For everyone who applies for Social Security disability benefits one of the major questions people have to answer is what date are you claiming that you became disabled? Not just any date can be chosen. Some people respond to this question claiming they became disabled 20 years earlier because this is when their conditions first rose to the surface, but for a lot of people this is not a proper Alleged Onset Date (AOD) of disability.
The reason being is that even though a person might first develop complications it does not prevent them from working at a substantial level. It may sound ridiculous to point out, but generally you cannot maintain full-time work and meet the non-medical rules for Social Security disability.
Selecting an AOD can be a tricky business, but here are some guidelines to go by. The AOD many times coincides with when someone stops working entirely. For instance, a claimant was working full-time, but an injury or illness set in prohibiting them from working. The day after the person stopped working would become the AOD in this instance. There are other cases where a person applying for disability might have worked at a full-time level for several years, but reduced their hours to part-time recently due to impairments. In this instance the AOD could be when the person started working part time depending on how much the person makes.
The basic rule is that the AOD should coincide with when a person reduces their hours at work due to impairments and the applicant is earning less than $1,130 per month in gross income. Social Security considers anyone earning that much money and more to be gainfully employed, and if you are gainfully employed, you are not eligible for Social Security disability not matter what your impairments are. For more information about AODs click here.
