How Does Your Personal Injury Case Affect Your Disability Benefits?

What type of Social Security Disability income are you receiving?

Video Transcript:

If you’re receiving Social Security Disability benefits and you have a personal injury claim, how does that affect it?

Hi, I’m Darrell Castle and I’m an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee, and the answer to that question is that it depends on the type of disability income that you’re getting.

If you’re getting SSI, then that’s a little bit different than if you’re getting Social Security Disability income. SSI is like a welfare program. It’s like an entitlement program to be blunt about it. It is a benefit program and if you receive additional income, there might be a penalty. There might be a deduction or suspension until that additional lump sum is gone. It depends on the amount of money that you have in your bank account at any one time.

You can check with the Social Security Administration office to checkout what type of disability you’re actually getting. But if you’re like most people — the vast majority of people — your Social Security benefits is disability income. Insurance.

That’s basically not affected at all because it’s an insurance program that you pay for everyday that you work. You pay for it all of your working life, so you get that whether you receive any lump sum or not.

Once again, you need to check with the Social Security agency to make sure which type of Social Security income you’re getting.

The other thing I’ll tell you folks is don’t try to hide this from the Social Security Administration. You cannot hide from them. They will find you. They will find out about it. Your Social Security number is everywhere. It’s connected and the federal government will know. Believe me. So don’t try to hide it and contact them and be up front about it.

And the other thing I want to tell you is, it is better to deal with it on the front end — which most of the time it’s not even a problem — but it’s better to deal with it on the front end than end up having to pay back that money by having your disability check cut off. You don’t want that to happen so just be up front with them and be honest. You are welcome to speak with a disability lawyer Memphis, TN can provide from our firm by contacting the offices of Darrell Castle & Associates.

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If you think you have a personal injury case, we’d love to talk with you. Call me today at (901) 327-1212 for a free case evaluation. Or you can fill out the form to the right of this page to have someone from our office contact you.