Social Security Disability is a benefit you already paid for. It comes out of every paycheck you have ever earned, and it exists for exactly the situation you may be in now — a condition serious enough that you cannot work.
It is also a program that turns most people down the first time they ask.
What Social Security actually asks
Three things have to line up, and they are assessed separately.
- Have you worked enough, and recently enough? SSDI is an insurance program. You earn coverage through work credits, and the coverage can lapse if you have been out of the workforce for a long stretch.
- Are you earning too much right now? There is a monthly figure called substantial gainful activity. In 2026 it is $1,690 a month, or $2,830 if you are statutorily blind. Earn above it and the claim generally stops there, before anyone looks at your medical records.
- Is your condition severe enough, and will it last? It has to prevent substantial work and be expected to last at least twelve months or result in death.
That second one catches people who are trying to hold on to part-time work. It is worth knowing the number before you make decisions about hours, not after.
The step-by-step evaluation Social Security runs, and what happens at each stage, is set out in our Social Security Disability questions and answers.
If you are also on workers’ compensation
This is where a lot of Staten Island cases sit, and it is the part most often handled badly.
A serious work injury can support both a workers’ compensation claim and a Social Security Disability claim. They are separate systems with separate standards — comp asks what your injury did to your earning capacity, Social Security asks whether you can do any substantial work at all — and qualifying for one does not decide the other.
What matters is that they interact. Receiving workers’ compensation can reduce your SSDI, because the two together are capped against a figure based on your prior earnings. That reduction is not fixed — it depends in part on how your comp benefits are characterized and spread out.
Which is why the language in a comp settlement matters to a benefit paid by a different agency entirely. If a Section 32 settlement is drafted without attention to it, the offset against your Social Security can be far larger than it needed to be, for years. That is a solvable problem if somebody is looking at both sides at once, and an expensive one if nobody is.
Handling comp and disability in the same office is the reason that gets caught.
Being denied is normal, and it is not the end
Most initial applications are denied. That is not a comment on how sick you are — it is how the process runs, and the denial letter rarely explains anything useful.
What matters is what you do next, and how quickly. There is an appeal ladder, and each rung has a deadline:
- Reconsideration — the file is reviewed again by someone who did not make the first decision.
- A hearing before an Administrative Law Judge — the stage where representation makes the most difference, because for the first time a person hears from you directly.
- Appeals Council review — a check on whether the judge applied the law correctly.
- Federal court — the last step.
The mistake that costs the most is starting over. A fresh application after a denial can throw away months of protected filing date. Appealing preserves what you have already built; reapplying often does not.
What it costs to have someone handle it
Nothing up front, and the fee is capped by federal law rather than by us.
A representative may charge the lesser of 25 percent of your past-due benefits or $9,200 — that ceiling has been in place since November 30, 2024. The fee comes out of back benefits, is approved by Social Security, and is not charged against your ongoing monthly payments.
If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Going back to work without losing everything
People assume that trying to work again ends the benefit immediately. It does not have to.
Social Security has a trial work period that lets you test whether you can manage it. In 2026, a month counts as a trial work month once you earn more than $1,210. Those months are meant to be an experiment rather than a decision, but the rules around them are easy to trip over, and the consequences of getting it wrong land on your benefits.
If you are thinking about going back in any capacity, that is a conversation to have first.
Talk to a Staten Island disability attorney
If you cannot work, have been denied, or are trying to work out whether your work injury also supports a disability claim, that is worth a conversation before deadlines start closing.
Call (718) 701-2776. The consultation costs nothing, and you will speak with me.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own claim. The figures above are the 2026 amounts and Social Security adjusts them annually.