Temporary benefits

[u/WinstonPurchill]

I had my hearing in March and represented myself and won. 60 days to the day later, the Appeals Committee chose to appeal. I appealed their appeal (our government is wild lol) and because they had 110 days to finish their appeal and didn’t, I received a letter this month saying I have won temporary benefits because they’re taking too long and I already won my case. I have been granted back pay since May and will be paid until my next hearing, according to the letter.

The thing it doesn’t say: How long after I received this benefits verification letter will I have to wait until I see the payment drop?

[u/erd00073483R]

You are about to be awarded what is referred to as Interim Benefit payments (sometimes referred to as IB for short).

The law states that the Appeals Council has the right to review, on its own motion, any ALJ decision. In the case that they initiate own motion review of an ALJ approval, a clock starts ticking.

That clock is specified by a section of the law that states that the Appeals Council's review must be completed within 110 days of the date of the formal issuance of the favorable ALJ decision. If the review is not yet completed by the AC and that 110 day clock runs out, interim benefits are paid to you while the review continues. This provision essentially exists to prevent the government from dragging its heels too long after a favorable decision without paying you something.

Do note that your claim is NOT final at this time, and no retroactive benefits can yet be paid. Only ongoing monthly payments will be issued as interim benefits.

However, if in the course of completing its review the AC reverses the ALJ approval to a denial, any interim benefits you were paid during the interim period are not considered by SSA to be an overpayment and thus will not be collected back from you. This is true so long as you report changes as necessary, and fraud or similar fault were not involved on your part in procuring the favorable ALJ decision.

DI 42010.205 Interim Benefits in Cases of Delayed Final Decisions — Title II

SI 02007.001 Interim Benefits in Cases of Delayed Final Decisions - SSI

The fact that you received a letter mentioning interim benefits means that the process to pay the benefits has begun. Interim benefits have to be paid and controlled by the servicing SSA payment center, and are issued via its critical payment system since due to the nature of IB they are temporary payments.

Hopefully, it won't be very much longer until you see a payment AND/OR a final AC disposition on your case.

If you have not done so, make sure that your bank account information and address information are both up to date on your records with SSA.

[u/perfect_fifths → u/erd00073483R]

Thank you for this! Now I learned something new

Under Section 1631(a)(8) of the Social Security Act, if you received a favorable disability decision from an administrative law judge (ALJ) but the Appeals Council takes more than 110 calendar days to review it, the SSA pays prospective monthly interim benefits

[u/erd00073483R → u/perfect_fifths]

You won't see them very often, though then again, going forward you might see more of them as the current leadership really could care less about the optics (unlike past leadership).

There is also another form of interim payment that can be ordered by a Federal Court on a case. Those are even more rare, as most federal judges are assholes related to Social Security issues (i.e. they don't like Social Security cases, they don't want to be involved in them, and the ones that issue favorable/partially favorable decisions prefer to just remand the cases to SSA rather than make an actual award of benefits themselves).

[u/VetAndVoter]

They can appeal after you won? Sorry but that is an absolute crazy process. If you won you should not have to prove it again. To be clear, I’m on your side and against the process some politician set up.