Disability and Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA)

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Transcription:

“Hi, my name is Andrew Kinney. I'm an attorney at Hoglund Law offices. I practice social security disability law. Today I wanted to talk about substantial gainful activity. An acronym for this is SGA. This is a very important concept in social security law. It particularly applies to people who have either applied for benefits or for people who are thinking about applying for benefits. Why? Because social security only allows people to apply for benefits when they are not currently working.

Well what does social security mean by working? When social security considers whether someone can apply for social security disability and SSI benefits, they first determine not whether they are working fulltime or part time. What they look at specifically is monthly gross earnings. There are some exceptions to this, but essentially, at least in the year 2011, if you make over $1,000 gross each month and you have done that for three months in a row, social security considers that you are working. What does that mean for you? If you are having a health problem that is slowly affecting your ability to put hours in and you feel like you aren't going to get better, work with your doctor and plan to apply for benefits during the month that you will be earning less than $1,000 gross (as of 2011) per month. If your earnings are over $1,000 a month gross in the year 2011, social security will not allow you to apply for benefits.

What about those who have already applied for benefits? How does that apply? Well, what social security does is they use the three-month rule as well. They will presume if you work for three months in a row with a pending social security disability claim or an SSI claim and make over the SGA amount for that year, they will presume that you are back to work. If you do it for six months, it is conclusive and there is no argument to make. These sort of questions can be very difficult.

If you have questions about substantial gainful activity, please feel free to use our website at HoglundLaw.com. You can also call our office if you are considering applying for benefits, or you have a pending appeal. Our number is 1-800-850-7867. Thank you.”