My Lawyer Says I Can’t Get Disability After My Car Accident, What Can I Do?

First of all, let’s cut to the point here, if you have been in a car accident and are seriously injured, you may have a permanent disability. Even if you don’t have a decidedly permanent disability, you may have a loss of income resulting from an inability to continue your daily life tasks, or an injury that is debilitating in other major ways. If you are determined by the federal government to be disabled, you will need to pass a five-step test from the Social Security Disability Insurance administration. This test is meant to measure the level of your disability, and determine if you are eligible for any disability payments from the Social Security administration. In this way, it is up to other “powers that be” and not up to your attorney, to determine if you are eligible for disability payments from the government or from your employer for a personal injury you have had recently.

The five steps or stages to determining if you have a disability begin with these directives. First, it is necessary to work out if you have the ability to work in a substantial gainful activity. That means, can you work for pay or profit either full or part-time, or not? As an answer, if you can work at a substantial gainful activity and your earnings exceed a certain threshold, you will in general not be considered as disabled.

Second, the severity of your impairment will be reviewed. If you are injured from a car accident, and it significantly limits your ability to perform basic work activities, you may be determined to be disabled. If you cannot perform basic work activities, such as:

• Standing
• Sitting
• Lifting
• Carrying
• Walking

Then, you may be determined by the authorities to be the status of a disabled person, at that point.

Third, the impairments that you do suffer from now after your car accident will be listed. This list of impairments will serve to quality you for disability benefits, if they can be verified.

Fourth, the impairments need to show that you cannot perform your past work, or any work that you have performed as a job in the past 15 years. If you are unable to perform your past job and for a significant amount of time work that you used to do, you may be declared to be disabled.

Fifth and finally, you will be reviewed to determine if you can’t perform your past work, is there any other work that you will in the future be qualified to perform. The Social Security Administration will review your age, education and work experience to review if you can do any basic work-related tasks despite your level of physical impairment.

When you call us today at the DTLA Law Group at 855.339.8879, we can review your claim with your regarding your personal injury claim after a car accident. You can work with a lawyer with experience in managing, negotiating and settling out personal injury claims for our clients. Call now to speak to an attorney with expertise in personal injury claims for disability after a car accident.