happy friday everyone thank you so much for joining us on this friday to learn more about how you can best serve your veteran clients who are also eligible for social security um before i get started i'm going to turn on the live transcription that way y'all can see what i'm saying at the bottom of the screen you should start to see a black box that is you know captioning everything that i'm saying so if you have an issue please message me in the q a or the chat and i'll try to help you out if you're not seeing that but welcome you all i see everyone trickling in we're going to have a great presentation here today as always this presentation is being recorded all of the materials uh the powerpoints and the recording will be sent out to all registrants uh later on uh today or tomorrow uh but certainly um tomorrow's saturday so maybe by monday but uh you will get a copy of everything here um so don't worry if you missed something um or if you need anything else also if anyone has any questions throughout this presentation please feel free to drop any questions into the chat or the q a if time permits i will read your questions out loud to our presenter um and if time permits uh hopefully our presenter will answer them so um since i see we have about 10 folks here but i know we certainly had more that registered i'm going to get started with the introductions um to buy some time so that we can then get into our subject matter and before i get into that i do want to say that this was approved for cle credit at the end of this presentation i will verbally announce the cle code and i'll also put it in the chat but if anybody wants to remind me at the end i will not be offended because there were two times that i forgot and thank goodness somebody reminded me so please feel free to um you know just let me know hey alexis can we have the cle code so without further ado i'm going to introduce our presenter marissa o'connor marissa is a 17-year attorney licensed in florida california the united states district court of the middle district of florida and the united states court of appeals for veterans claims during marissa's time in private practice her areas of practice and expertise covered these following areas not in including but not limited to elder abuse medical malpractice litigation probate and estate planning and social security disability in 2016 marissa moved over to the non-profit sector with community legal services of mid florida uh first as a helpline attorney then as a staff attorney in the public benefits unit and now as manager of public interest and public benefits throughout her career marissa has assisted clients with matters related to veterans benefits social security benefits medicaid medicare and the supplemental nutritional program marissa has also worked closely with veterans enrolled in supportive services for veterans and families to provide holistic services to veterans and their families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness thank you so much marissa for being here for dedicating your time to our professional development and for all that you do um in our community and without further ado i will turn this over to you thank you so much alexis uh all right so um today we're going to talk about um veterans work in social security cases and i think before we get into the the nitty-gritty of things it's important to understand exactly um the differences between the veterans programs va programs and social security programs both have programs for people who are disabled under the va there is a non-service connected pension and service connected disability similar to ssdi and ssi you've got the non-service-connected pension is income based kind of like the ssi for social security uh service connected disability they don't consider the income but they do look at whether the disability started either started or was aggravated during the time of active duty service there are other criteria for va pension and disability just like our ssdi the standards are the are different for the va disability compared to social security disability whether it be for [Music] ssi or ssdi and um and just to unders and and i should probably back up for a minute here is that ssi is the social security's income based and ssdi is what we put into our into the system so when we work we put money into the system and into social security and so if there is later a disability claim and that is approved then it comes from that same money uh that we put in but both ssi and ssdi require a showing of a disability and for social security purposes the disability requirement is that they must be so disabled that it would last or uh or has lasted uh for 12 consecutive months and they're unable to work during that time or the or they're expected to result in death for va pension and disability it is also they are disabilities and again like one it would be income based and one come one is not income based one is based on the work requirement um and they do have capped amounts for ssi and for va pension for how much person um can have in in income and resources um they are uh in social security disability you have the work um the sga substantial gainful activity uh at issue that they can't they can work but they can't go over that amount otherwise it's as if they are no longer disabled with va claims uh they can work so long as they're not a hundred percent total and permanent uh disabled at that point they are not permitted to work under va rules and that is really where we're going with this because you'll see as i go through that the people who are the veterans who are at 100 just because they are totally and permanently disabled does not mean they automatically get the social security benefits and so that's what we're going to get into more as we go through um [Music] so here's a little more about it the difference is the va and the social security i i like it better looking at it this way with the similarities and the differences uh which i think i've covered most of this uh then all four requiring some sort of impairment disability diagnosis the va pension v and ssi are both income based disability va disability service connected disability that should be and ssdi both relate to work va and ssn ssa will give higher paying programs um if applying for both so that they depending on which which ones uh there may be an offset or they may be able to get both benefits um a pension and ssi they offset so that's why a person who has a va pension won't be able to get disability is what va disability as well because it just gets offset and you can only have one or the other but you can offset a va pension with ssi and a veteran can receive both va disability and ssdi at the same time because they're not income based programs the differences whether it was service connected or not for va pension and va disability main difference between ssd issi was whether there was enough work history because there has to be so many credits to be able to get ssdi otherwise they're going to look at ssi uh the social security standard for disability different being than the va's and that you cannot get both the pension and the va disability as i just said you can get ssdi and ssi so long as the ssdi amount is not above the ssi amount so it again it gets offset all right so the social security veterans rules and cases so what a lot of people don't realize is there are quite a bit of rules in the um pums which is the procedural manual at the lower levels and and halex being at the hearing level the administrative law judge level um so and the rules that they have are primarily for military casualty wounded warrior and as i said earlier the va hundred percent permanent in total which they call vapt and at the lower levels both the wounded warrior and the total permanent and total cases they are considered priorities and this is through appeals as well so it is at all levels at the lower level so if it's the it needs to be the initial application and the reconsideration and then if it moves on to a hearing then per hallux these cases are considered critical cases so all of the if they fall under the wounded warrior or the permanent in total then they should be expedited cases due to these priority and critical status to be a military casualty wounded warrior the person would have to be a current or former military member who sustained illness injury or a wound and that they're alleging a physical or mental impairment to social security and for social security purposes it doesn't matter how or where it was caused as long as they're alleging an impairment and the impairment had to be uh occurred while incurred while on active duty or it had to be after october 1st 2001 and for active duty that is anyone who is enlisted in the um in a military branch but if they are in reserves or national guard that is not necessarily going to be active duty so if they were injured while they were in active duty training or and they had been deployed and then injured that would be considered active duty uh for permanent and total the person has to be a veteran they have to be 100 permanent and total disability rating and this is only for the service connected disability not for a pension it does not apply to that and again they have to be alleging a physical or mental impairment regardless of how it occurred so what happens at the social security level is that um they are being social security has communications with the dod and the va on a weekly basis dod department of defense is informing social security of identities of people who may who fit into the military casualty wounded warrior classification and the va is notifying social security of the permanent and total classification uh identified people and so what they do when a claim is being made is they look to see if it matches any of the identifications made from the dod or the va and if so then they are supposed to be flagging the claim immediately um and they are supposed to be they're supposed to make an appointment or either have the application completed at that time when the per the claimant contacts them or they set up an a time to do the application no later than three business days from that first contact if they go through the 800 number then the field office has to call the claimant within two business days to schedule that appointment because they they're supposed to be doing this so that it can keep that priority status and get expedited so social security um has set out that they should be considering closed periods of disability so what i what we tend to see on on a lot of cases is that the person um [Music] you know they'll they'll deny somebody even if they have excuse me even if there's been an improvement but they met it at one point during the alleged time period so for veterans they are supposed to be looking actually to see if there is a closed period of disability and so if and this may occur more with the wounded warriors so if they are somebody who was injured on duty and they they're getting their medical treatment on a military base and they go ahead and apply for social security not really knowing how it's going to be but they know at that time they've you know it's going to take a long time to recover and then by the time they get out they may have improved and not meet any of the disability rules but they still should be able to get the social security benefits for that time for that closed period um and then social security has a potential on day on set date um that they are supposed to be looking at they're supposed to develop an earlier onset or a potential onset date that is either um it can be earlier or later than the alleged onset date but the in their palms they are instructed to try to develop an earlier onset date they have to get receipt the field office gets receipt from dds two days after they submit the claim to dds or the appeal and if it's a paper file it's seven days they get that receipt the field office is to expedite payments so if there's an approved claim then the field office will expedite the payments the field office also will is supposed to send hearing and review of hearing requests so an appeals council request they're supposed to send those directly to the appropriate division so that they can make sure that it is still a priority case or a critical case at the higher levels and then for the permanent and total uh veterans they um can submit the the va award letter um as verification uh if there if there was no system alert to say that this person is 100 disabled permanent and total because what's going to happen is the veterans going to come in and say but i'm 100 rated with the va so i should get social security benefits well if they don't have them in the system and it hasn't been they can't flag it that way they can flag it as a priority case as long as there's a va award letter that says that there was a um a rating of a hundred percent for permanent and total disability so here's a sample of an award letter that would suffice to make that verification there are multiple pages on this but they do have this in the palms and so you could refer to that if you wanted to see more of the sample but you can see it does talk about where [Music] how much the monthly entitlement is when it started that it's service connected and it'll give the percentage and it'll it'll talk about in here too if it's permanent in total so this is what they're going to look for to make sure that a person a veteran can come under this priority and these are samples of the flags that are supposed to go with the files so you've got so you can see that it's supposed to be going uh to each unit with this flag at each level um for both the 100 permanent and total as well as the military casual wounded warrior so in developing the record and i'm going to go into this a little more in the next section on on my uh on on what you should look for when you're developing the record but know that the palms does set forth what social security should be doing to develop the record so they have um they are supposed to be requesting records from uh the dod because the dia because the dod has the records from the military treatment facilities um and those are are generally held at those treatment facilities for at least two years from the time of treatment after that there's uh different places where they may be but they but social security does make the records request to the dod to see if there's any military treatment facility records they are to develop the record front using the va records and they ask for a health summary or health care summary from the va so it's a more like a transcript of records and that's for any of the va medical either va medical center or va clinics any of the the veterans health administration facilities and then finally they are to request records from the national personnel record center nprc uh to get service medical records so once the um if they're no longer records at the military treatment facilities then the national the nprc should have them it's usually i find either at the mprc or at the va so they should get those records from one or the other and then to um adjudicate the claims to make the decision so we know at least for veterans they've got the award letter saying they're 100 permanent and rated permanent and total rated and so under the palms it says that they social security should be considering va and dod decisions because they are other government agencies and they should be considering any of the evidence or all of the evidence really that that the dod or the va use to make that decision and they are not required to follow the decisions but they are required to at least consider them and this came up in noble v commissioner of social security in 2020 at the 11th circuit and in that case the matter was remanded to the alj to because the alj did not consider the rating decision it wasn't even addressed in the decision so they you know they say like the palms you know the first question is does the alj's decision show that it was considered because it must be and if they didn't consider it then then it needs to be remanded and the next question doesn't need to be answered because and that next question being you know did they follow the decision but really they're not required to follow it but just not even addressing it or acknowledging it is a reason for remand so va records how what to request how to use them so this is where um where there's there are more records you'll see there are more records here than what social security is supposed to be required or supposed to be requesting to develop the record so i'm going to preface this by my recommendation is get these records and submit them because it's going to give it's going to provide you with more than what social security is getting so first there's the personnel records so i noted before that the nprc is has the service medical records but there may also be information in the personnel file itself and that also comes from the mprc usually the form that is used to request that is the va form sf180 and you can see i have highlighted here you're looking for the official military personnel file and the reason why i recommend that you get this file is because you you never know what you're going to find in there there may have been um misconduct or or discipline i should say discipline reports there could be just um there could have been work restrictions there could have been um [Music] anything that didn't require the veteran or the military personnel to have to go to a health facility they may have just gone to a sick bay it just might have been noted that but nothing was really um emphasized there there are no records from uh they didn't go to an outpatient clinic or an off off base hospital or anything like that so but it might there might at least be a note in here that that happened even though they don't have those off-base records in the file and those might help and then there are things that could could show mental health if issues um if they was in unauthorized absence or awol if there would you know if they the person was getting into fights if there was substance use i mean all of those things might be able to help support a mental health impairment and then i said the work is restrictions and also when a person is discharged from the from their military service they are supposed to receive an exit exam for physical uh when they leave and it's not always done but it may be if it was there may be notation on there and it's just enough to show when something started uh even if it got worse through the years but at least you can show that progression that this is something the person has had for 10 years and and now they're at a point that they need the disability benefits from social security because it's gotten to a point now where they can't work on that same form the sf-180 there you would also request the service medical records and i talked about that before that social security is supposed to be requesting those they will um in and they social security is going to request a health summary um actually i'm sorry that's on the va form uh not this one for the service record so the service records you want to get all the records again indicate that if you know specific hospitals you can see right under this highlighted section it says i request impatient hospitalization records from with a blank so if you know that there were specific hospitalizations during the time of service be sure to fill that in there if this form too this last page that i have up here as well this page is going to show you where to send the sf-180 and it'll tell you it's all based on when they served which branch they served if you may need to request the medical records service medical records from a different place than the personnel records but this last page on the form will provide that information to you and then again if there were injuries or conditions that started during the service and developed then these service medical records will be helpful to you uh in your social security claim and then the va medical records this is the one the that i started talking about before accidentally uh they have social security is going to request a health summary so if you look at this form it has a health summary prior two years while i do recommend setting a time frame for how many records you want i still recommend that you request all records and not just the health summary because you you never know what information is not making it into the health summary and i understand why social security would want that just to limit the amount of records in their possession but and what they have to review um because depending on how long the veteran has been receiving medical treatment at the va you can have some pretty pretty long records um in the thousands uh to review so that's why they're trying to limit it as much as possible i'm always concerned about what's not making it in there that can be of help you want to check with your with the regional medical center the va medical center to find out if they need an electronic signature if it's okay to have an electronic signature or if they need a wet signature it just depends on the regional center if a person if a veteran was treated at a clinic you still request the records through the regional medical center because they have that's where the medical records requests go through so depending on which county they're each going to have different regional offices um okay and then the claims file and this this is um one that really can be valuable it provides uh information about any compensation and pension claim filed so service connected disability or even the non-service connected pension but it's going to have medical records in there it might have pertinent personnel records in there that go towards what their claim was the in the va process for benefits when a veteran claims a disability a service-connected disability they have to go on a cmp a compensation and pension exam which is similar to a consultative exam for social security purposes and at those exams the provider the healthcare provider who's conducting it they will complete a disability benefit questionnaire also called a dbq and that has it goes into a lot more detail than what you see for medical statements for social security uh and for the ce reports and it does ask the question on there does this condition um cause problems for working so it's something you really want to look at if they're claiming the same disability for social security as they are from the va this is your underlying information that the case was talking that the palms was talking about earlier it's not just what's in the rating decision but how did they get to that decision so you want to look at at these you want to be able to see these dbqs and see what the doctor said about the um about the impairments and the disability and then finally uh va vocational rehabilitation records the va has a voc rehab unit um and i believe right now they keep changing the name i believe it's vr and e right now is the name of it and through the voc rehab with the va though there's a couple things that can happen a veteran may claim unemployability which you might see in the in the c file in the claims file about that claim but that's saying that they have so a high enough rating that they can apply for unemployability saying i i'm unable to work because of these conditions and if they're granted unemployability or tdiu then that um with that will give them a combined rating of a hundred percent and put them in total and permanent disability um but what the what voc rehab also does at the va is they provide services so they do assessments and they see if there's anything they can help the veteran with whether it be education or trainings or even equipment i've know veterans who have gone through it and through assessments with the va voc rehab and they have said that the person um can't work but they needed things to help them at home to be able to live independently um like computers or something like that but they um but they do that assessment and they can say whether they feel a person can work a veteran can work or cannot work uh and so that's why if you don't see any claims for voc rehab in the c file or for the unemployability you may want to go to the vocational rehab itself and ask for the records usually if they're asking for if the veteran's getting services through them and there's been an assessment done there's usually a case manager in that unit that the veterans working with and sometimes they'll they'll accept a records request and put it through the process so they can help you to get the records um and there's a copy here of or excuse me the top part here about what that records request is going to look like but it's just a release for information and with all of these they are supposed the va is supposed to not mprc but the va for the any of the va records they are supposed to provide these records within 30 days and if it takes longer than 30 days they're supposed to let you know and they may ask for a new one to be submitted at that point um it's as just a good rule of thumb tickle a follow-up for 30 days out from when you send it so that you can see if you haven't gotten it by then see if you can get some kind of status or um get them pushed through but you do want to allow at least 30 days to get the record so if you're coming up on a deadline and it's going to be you need it before 30 days you can try but they'll say they have 30 days to get it to you and then sometimes it helps for the veterans to get the records on their own um so here's a list they can go to their you can go to va.gov backslash records and you can see all the different things that the veterans can get on their own they can get a copy of their dd214 which talk which is their release document that says what kind of discharge character they had and their codes on there is to um you know if there were any medical issues or if they can re-enlist if there were um there's just a bunch of different codes on there that can be helpful too um but then they can get their va medical records through here their benefits letter um so if you need that verification letter right away to have when you're filing a claim and you want to have it i would recommend you have the veteran go to this um this is probably taking them to ebenefits so that they can get a copy of that letter and i've kind of gone a bit faster on that than i planned i do have some other tips for you and and and things and i was gonna do questions after but i see there are some in the chat maybe i'll take a break now yeah sure that was wonderful thank you so much marissa you know i i've dabbled a little bit in veterans work and um you know i have a colleague that once said to me the va can sometimes be clear as mud right and i had just never heard that before um and when i when i dabbled in social security and i dabbled in veterans work it made sense um so thank you so much for all of that practical um advice that i know practitioners will be able to rely on um so a couple of questions did come through through the chat and you know anyone who's on please feel free to ask any questions don't be shy it's so rare to have someone that you can just directly ask questions to about this stuff because god knows if you call the va you'll be waiting for a while um but so the first question we have is the uh nprc has not been sending full military personnel files or in-service records since covet all i have received from them are the dd214 forms only are there others are other sources are there other sources or options excuse me or suggestions for getting the entire military personnel and in-service treatment records now this is a short answer um what i have been doing because i have been finding this as well is we have actually been resubmitting our requests and um and it's interesting to see you know i think it's whoever is on the other end processing and now that we're you know i think we're finally coming out of kovid so hopefully this won't remain a problem but um that definitely has been happening the past two years and that's even if you're lucky to get a response i mean we have had some that we have requested that have taken you know we you know four months later we're like wait we we still don't have these records and so we've just been resubmitting our requests and seeing what we can get that way yeah they're the only agency that holds the records wow well hopefully they they start to turn that around uh you know because it really does affect folks what you know what do they do when they're waiting right what are they doing that's the reality um and actually so um the the other question was actually in response to to the first question um and so i do see as well a comment that the nprc closed in march of 2020 and we're only fulfilling emergency requests and i do recall that because i was still doing some veterans work at that time i think the social security administration has started their in-person stuff at the office again right yes they have they have and i don't think it's in all offices but yes and some are by appointment only sure um so i those are the two though that that's the question that came in so far maybe a few more will come in while you're going over you know other advocacy um tips or considerations i didn't mean to cut you off there was anything else that you wanted to say on that topic or in response no that was that's all i have for that all right then i will go through these and then we'll see if there are any other questions so going back to the um to the beginning and the rules the palms and and alex about expediting these uh the wounded warriors and the total and permanent cases just keep in mind these are only applying to initial applications and appeals so if somebody has a continuing disability review they do not get a priority it will not be expedited even if they are falling under a wounded warrior or total and permanent criteria and and these records that i just went through in my section forget about for a minute what palms say and what social security is doing to develop the record my rule of thumb is this applies to any veteran or or military personnel who is seeking social security disability because they may not be getting the priority but you are going to find information in these documents that social security probably is not going to see unless you point it out to them and they probably aren't going to request them the same way as they would if it were somebody who's who's meeting criteria and expedited i don't know that they would develop the case the same way so it's up to us to be able to do that there are special veterans benefits under social security they are different than what we've been talking about but i did want to just point out that um this only applies for world war ii veterans uh if they are eligible for ssi then there they should be eligible for these special veterans benefits as well and it's for any time that they were qualified uh and reside outside of the u.s some income things to think about too when when you're working with your clients your veteran clients or military clients military disability benefits do not offset ssdi if the military service is after december 31 1956 which more than likely most of of our clients are probably after that time um maybe not but but they will not offset the ssdi the va income is considered uncur unearned income for purposes of ssi the sga for the military casualty and wounded warriors um is going to be calculated differently because they're in the military still presuming that they're still in the military i should say because they're they may be in a medical treatment and not actually working but they're still getting paid so the their sga is different so what is what ssa is supposed to be doing to calculate the sja is to look at the reasonable worth of the claimant's actual work activity by comparing it to work activities from people in the civilian force so what work did they actually do and how how much of it and what kind of rate would that that person get if they were in a non-military workforce um so yeah they received full payment pay while they're receiving medical treatment and and so they want to make that distinguishing factor and just a reminder i know i went into the va benefits part of it you may already be va accredited but if you are not and you want to work in that and give any advice on va benefits then you do need to be accredited so um they because it could be construed as preparation presentation and prosecution for a claim for va benefits so um just you may want to go ahead and get va accredited if your clientele is uh military or veterans just to have that um [Music] and i can direct you if it direct anyone to where to go if they want to get accredited it's it's not a difficult process but you should look into that and now i'm back at questions i'm muted sorry i said awesome thank you so much you know i was thinking i remember when i was doing social security work and veterans work and and the palms and then the social security and individual rules and trying to find out what's been updated versus what's not is there something that um how often are the poms updated and is there anything that you know practitioners can get notifications kind of like when you're following like a case in session or something like that of any updated poms or updated um ssa regulations um i'm sure there is um but i do i keep them bookmarked on my browser and you can have the there's a page for the palms where you can get to the table of contents you can get to the changes you can get to any emergency orders and and you can keep track of it that way because i always figure going to the web page when i need it then i'm going to get the most current information that's a great point do you think that that's something that maybe you could email over to me so i can include that with the materials that way folks can say all right this is where right where i go because i know that if you type in things that takes you everywhere and there's a lot of uh distraction online sure sure yeah i can do that i'll um it'll be two sites one for palms one for alex that is perfect i know i would have really appreciated that if i was still doing that work um so you know without that i don't have any other questions i don't know if any folks you know who are still here um have any questions um if any questions come up at a later date uh please feel free to email me directly um and i'll do what i can to try oh and then and then marissa is giving her [Laughter] so but with that um you know marissa did uh is going to be giving you a copy of this powerpoint which i think is huge because it just has so much practical information even going down to just the names and forms and who you contact which sometimes can be a real pain to find out on your own um you know with that being said i i know you've been talking already for this hour um but if there is anything else uh that you would like to say in closing as we're starting to receive the thank yous um so i leave it to you if there's anything you want to round out before we turn off the recording um now i just want to thank everyone who did sign up and who were was able to come and i hope this was helpful to you i i think there's a lot of information within social security and within the va files that um that need to be taken more advantage of to be able to help our clients so i hope this helped to highlight those absolutely i certainly think it did um and i remembered the cle code so i popped that into the chat but to read it out loud it is 2 2 0 2 six four nine and as in nancy if anyone has any trouble with it please just reach out to me directly i'm going to be including it in the um email with all the materials um so you know you'll have another chance to see it um if you missed it now um but thank you so much thank you for all that you do um for our veteran community for uh you know folks you know with disabilities for our homeless community um i don't know if you want to put a plug out for the re-entry while we're here oh the central florida re-entry network uh there's a veterans subcommittee both both the general committee and the veterans subcommittee is is are great resources um so if anybody is helping veterans and and specifically re-entering veterans and would like to join our subcommittee then please get in touch with me i'm more than happy to put you on our on our meeting i'm gonna bother you for a link to that too probably okay all right so with that everybody happy friday i can't believe it's finally friday yeah i hope everyone enjoys their weekend and uh thank you so so much marissa for everything you do and for sharing this time with us thank you
