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If the administrative law judge assigned to your case finds that you meet the qualifications for disability, he will issue a “Fully Favorable” or “Partially Favorable” decision. “Fully favorable” means that the judge has accepted your allegations of disability as of the onset date you set out in your application. A “partially favorable” decision means that the judge accepts that you are disabled, but as of a different date than what you alleged.
By contrast, an “unfavorable decision” means that the judge does not believe that you meet the definition of disability and you have not been awarded benefits.
Unfavorable or partially favorable decisions can be appealed to the Appeals Council and/or Federal District Court.
A Social Security hearing decision becomes official once it is issued in writing. You may have a strong sense of what the judge plans to do but nothing is formal until that written decision is issued. Even if the judge issues a “bench decision” and states in open court that he finds you disabled, you will have to wait for the written decision before you can be certain that you have won.
If you receive a fully or partially favorable decision, there are some steps you can take to speed up the processing of your money:
- if you ever gave Social Security bank account information and that information has changed, you must contact Social Security to change this information. I have been involved in several cases where a client’s past due benefit check of $20,000 was lost for many months because the client had closed her account and opened a new one but did not tell Social Security
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