When disability claimants are approved and receive a Notice of Award explaining their benefits, many are surprised to find out that for the first five months they’re disabled, they don’t actually receive any backpay.
In cases when a disability application is quickly approved, this can mean that they receive little backpay, or even none at all.
So, what is the five month waiting period, and is there any way around it?
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the five month waiting period applies only to Social Security Disability Insurance, the program that you pay into with your work credits.
The waiting period has been around since the ‘50s, and it’s authorized by statute. Part of the reason for it is to ensure that people who receive SSDI do indeed have a long-term disability. It’s also a policy that saves Social Security money.
There are also only two ways around it currently.
The first is to be diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Since 2020, the five month waiting period does not apply to that condition – and that condition only.
The other way around it is to be eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI). This is a need-based program that looks at your income and assets, so not everyone who is eligible for disability insurance is eligible for SSI as well.
Even if a claimant is eligible for both, most of the time the SSI benefit that they’ll receive is substantially less than what they’ll receive from disability insurance.
There have also been attempts in recent years to end the five month waiting period in Congress with the so-called “Stop the Wait Act,” but so far that legislation has stalled.
