You can get denied for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits for a lot of different reasons. It’s often frustrating and perhaps a bit confusing. You know you can’t work. You know you need benefits. How hard can it be to get someone else to see that?
One of the big reasons for a denial, though, is a technical error. This is often called a technical denial. It means that there is a problem with the paperwork.
For instance, if you are using original documents, you can’t alter them. You can’t write on them. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is very clear about this. Something as simple as writing your Social Security number on the document could trigger a denial because you technically broke that rule, even though, logically, you did not alter the application at all. You are supposed to provide additional information, when needed, on another piece of paper.
Remember, this type of denial does not mean that you are not eligible or that you don’t qualify for benefits. The SSA may agree that you are disabled, you can’t work and you deserve the payments. People often assume a denial means that isn’t true, but these technical denials show that it could have nothing at all to do with the validity of your claim.
If you do get denied, you need to know why. Changing the paperwork to get it to go through may be easier than you assumed. Once you know what happened to lead to the denial, that is when you can start looking into the legal options that you have available to you. There are usually steps you can take to keep moving forward with this process.
