Approved for SDI

Congradulations on the approval.  I too, was just recently approved for Social Security.  It only took me about 4 months to get approved, so I was very lucky.  Were you awarded any back pay for the time that they should have been paying you?  I have been on long term disability for just over 3 years and was  awarded back pay for nearly 18 months of when I should have been receiving social security. Unfortunately, I have to give the majority of the nearly $20,000 to the long term insurance company for over payment.  This really sucks, because it would have been really nice to be able to have that money to pay off medical debt.  One nice this though, is that my long term insurance company will still continue to pay a small benefit every month to supplement the social security.  I am actually getting about $100 a month raise, which I am referring as my crohn's promotion.(something to make my wife proud. lol)

To all of those that are going through the process still, good luck and don't give up.

I am sorry to hear that you have to pay for your lawyer, my insurance company paid for all of that for me.  As for the monthly benefit that I will be receiving from my long term insurance company, the policy that I have from my employer ensures that you will have atleast the same amount of money coming in every month after you are approved, as from before you were approved.  For example, if you were receiving $1000 a month from the long term insurance before you applied, but now that you are approved for SSI and your checks are for $900 from the government; the long term insurance company will pay you the difference to make up the lost $100 that you were paid previously.  The way that I got a raise, was that my SSI amount was within $80 of my long term payout and my policy guarentees that the long term disability checks have to be a minimum of $162.  So I can officially say that I got a crohn's disease promotion.  (I know that it is not much, but it still makes me feel good)  All of this depends on the policy that your employer has with their long term insurance company.  I was employed with America Online, and their insurance company is Unum Provident.  I am so relieved to have the S.S.I approved, because Unum was such a hard company to deal with.  They made it so hard for my doctors to have continuous approval and were actually harder on me than the S.S.I. process.  Even though I had a disease that was not going to go away, they were constantly questioning everything that my doctor sent them.  I had a positive diagnosis over 3 years ago, but they were still sending paperwork every 6 month for recertification.  My doctors got to the point that they were getting angry with the company for making them feel like they were being dishonest.  Come to find out, there was a class action lawsuit again them that they lost, for not certifying other people who were 100% disabled.  Once they found out that I qualified for S.S.I., they were suddenly really nice and were more than happy to hire and pay for a lawyer for me.  It is amazing the difference in a little bit of news of possible money savings for them, made them become so nice and supportive.