25 Mar If Social Security suspends disability benefits, can you appeal?

Q. Can Social Security suspend your disability benefits without providing an option to reinstate? And if you were suspended for working and now you’re not working, should it be reinstated? And lastly, if you owe for overpayment, can you make arrangements to pay it off?
— Confused

A. It gets complicated.

Social Security can suspend your benefits for several reasons.

If they did not have a known address, or the benefits returned as undeliverable, then benefits would stop, said Jody D’Agostini, a certified financial planner with Equitable Advisors/The Falcon Financial Group in Morristown.

Other causes would be if you were claiming Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) because of a disability and that disability has improved or no longer exists, she said.

As you noted, the most common reason for this to cease is that the recipient returned to work.

“When the worker retires, the benefit would switch from SSDI to their retirement benefit. For 2022, if you earn more than $1,350 a month, you exceed the amount that you can earn and still qualify,” she said.

For SSI — Supplemental Security Income — which is a need based or low-income program, if you earn over the limit, which for 2022 is $841 a month or having assets totaling over $2,000, then your SSI benefit can be terminated, D’Agostini said.

Some sources that have created this issue are pensions or alimony payments, he said.

Social Security regularly reviews cases to see if the medical condition that warranted the benefit still exists. This generally occurs every three to seven years, she said.

“You can get the benefits reinstated within five years of when your benefit stopped,” she said. “You would need to provide updated medical and earning information depending upon the benefit. For SSI, it generally takes about three months to reinstate.”

In terms of the overpayment, you can ask for a waiver if you cannot afford to pay it back, D’Agostini said.

“In many instances, they will forgive the overpayment if filed in a timely manner,” she said. “Social Security cannot deduct the overpayment from you until they have served you with written notice. The form is SSA-632.”

But note it can take the overpayment from any federal tax refund or from future Social Security payments, she said.

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This story was originally published on March 25, 2022.

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