Social Security
Reading a denial letter, line by line
What the four pages say, which paragraph matters, and the date you can’t miss.
Jasper Tuckwiller9 min read
A free legal clinic in Charleston, West Virginia
Help with Social Security and VA claims, one page at a time
We’re a nonprofit law office for West Virginians applying for disability benefits or appealing a denial. You don’t pay us, and the lawyer who reads your file stays with the claim until there’s a decision.
Patient
We read every page of your file before we say a word.Plain
Each letter from Social Security or the VA, in ordinary sentences.Present
Beside you at the hearing, and on the call after it.
Free means no fee and no costs: the clinic pays for medical records, copies and postage.
Winifred Wetzel
Director and staff attorney
A note on why this clinic works the way it does.
Most people who call us have already been told no once. The letter came in a window envelope, it ran four pages, and somewhere on page three it said the medical evidence didn’t show they couldn’t work. Nobody said which evidence it meant.
That letter is where our work usually starts. A disability claim is rarely won with a speech. It’s won with records: the right doctor’s notes, an opinion from a treating doctor written on the form the agency reads, a work history that matches what the body can still do. Gathering them takes months, and many people never find a lawyer to do it, because a private lawyer’s fee comes out of back pay and small claims pay little.
So we built a clinic that takes no fee. Grants and donors pay our salaries, which lets us take the claims a private office might pass on: SSI for a child, a VA rating that’s one step too low, a hearing request filed the week before the deadline.
Below are a short video, two of our guides, and three examples, invented but true to life, of how the numbers add up. If one sounds like yours, call.
Watch first
Ten minutes on reading a denial letter
Jasper Tuckwiller takes a notice from Social Security apart, paragraph by paragraph, and points to the one that decides what your appeal has to answer.
If you’d rather read than watch, the written guide covers the same letter and adds the deadlines.
Reading a Social Security denial letter, with Jasper Tuckwiller
Guides
Written for the months of waiting
Our lawyers write these for people in the middle of a claim. Read one before you call, or after.
VA claimsBefore your C&P exam: what the examiner writes down
The exam is short and the report is long. Here’s what goes into it and how to prepare.
Verena Cottrill7 min read
Worked examples
Three claims, worked through with numbers
These people are invented and the figures are rounded. The rules are real, and they show how a claim adds up; yours will have its own numbers.
- SSDI
Dale, 56, a welder whose back gave out
Dale stopped work in March and applied in June. Social Security pays nothing for the first five full months, so his benefits start in September. If his monthly benefit is $1,640 and the decision comes the next August, he’s owed eleven months at once: about $18,000.
Disabled from March
Five-month wait: April to August
Back pay from September
- SSI
Ruth, 61, who never worked long enough to qualify
Ruth can’t get SSDI, so she applies for SSI. She gets a $200 pension each month. SSI ignores the first $20 of it and subtracts the rest from the federal monthly rate, so if that rate is about $990, Ruth’s SSI is about $810 a month.
Pension: $200 a month
Ignored: the first $20
SSI makes up the difference
- VA
Earl, 68, a Vietnam veteran rated 30 percent
Earl’s hearing and lungs have gotten worse since his last rating. If new evidence moves him from 30 to 50 percent, his monthly payment goes up by roughly $500 at this year’s rates, and the VA pays the increase back to the date he filed.
Rated 30 percent
Asking for 50
Paid back to the filing date
Bring the letter. We’ll read it with you.
Tell us what kind of letter it is and the date at the top. Deadlines are short: usually 60 days to appeal a Social Security decision and one year for most VA decisions.