In this video Marc Whitehead, A Board Certified Social Security Disability Lawyer, explains how you can fight Social Security Disability penalties.
Do you know that Social Security can charge you civil penalties and assessments if they think you been miss leading them into giving you money? If not, consider yourself lucky. I can tell you as an experienced Disability attorney that has happened far to often.
The general idea behind the penalties and assessments isn’t a bad one. The Social Security Administration wants to punish those who are cheating the system so that the money will be there for people who need it. The problem with this is the the Social Security is a giant bureaucracy that makes mistakes all the time.
Several months ago the National Organization of Claims Representatives published the details of the extreme version of a case like this.
A women received disability benefits for a number of years, when she went back to work she notified the Social Security Administration immediately and her benefits stopped coming. Years later, her benefits mysteriously started up again. She then called the Social Security Administration to explain that she was working., but the benefits kept coming so she assumed she was supposed to be receiving them. Finally the Social Security Administration listened to her and set up a repayment plan. Several years later she received legal notification that she was being charged almost $40,000 in civil penalties and another $20,000 assessment. This women was basically being punished because it took the Social Security Administration too long to realize their own mistake, even after she had repeatedly told them that about their mistake. Luckily this women was smart enough to find herself an experience Social Security attorney as soon as possible.
Even with plenty of combined efforts and evidence to back them up it still took several phone calls and way to much of the women’s precious time to get this resolved. Every step of the way the Attorney provided documentation to show what the women had done, everything she was supposed to do, but still the Social Security Administration continued to fight. Finally they spoke with someone who agreed to reduce the penalties but wouldn’t agree to drop the case all together despite the overwhelming amount of evidence in the clients favor.
The Lawyer refused this offer, but noticed something during the conversation. The person they were speaking with didn’t have the knowledge of several documents they had already sent. Acting quickly, they resent everything. Almost immediately the person from the SSA called and dropped the case immediately.
This just goes to show you how important it is to keep fighting and know what you’re doing.
