Helping to obtain California Social Security disability benefits for claimants throughout Los Angeles and Southern California.

Social Security pays benefits to people who can’t work because they have a medical condition that’s expected to last at least one year or result in death. Federal law requires this very strict definition of disability. While some programs give money to people with partial disability or short-term disability, Social Security does not.

Certain members of your family may qualify for benefits based on your work. They include:
• Your spouse, if he or she is age 62 or older;
• Your spouse at any age, if he or she is caring for a child of yours who is younger than age 16 or disabled;
• Your unmarried child, including an adopted child, or in some cases, a step child or grandchild. The child must be younger than age 18 (or younger than 19 if still in high school);
• Your unmarried child, age 18 or older, if he or she has a disability that started before age 22. The child’s disability must also meet the definition of disability for adults.
The Law Offices of Nazanin Mazgani provide disability claimants legal help through all four stages of the disability process.
Will you qualify for Social Security disability benefits?
It depends on your age, education, recent jobs, and ability to work.
The Social Security Administration’s disability evaluation process is complicated, and sometimes its results may defy common sense. For example, you will not be found disabled simply because your doctor finds you disabled and says so, or because you’ve been found disabled under another California disability benefits program, such as Worker’s Compensation.

For the Social Security Administration in Los Angeles and throughout California to find you disabled, you must satisfy its definition of disabled. This definition has several requirements:

• You must not be working, or if you are working, you cannot be doing a “substantial gainful activity.” A substantial gainful activity is a job that pays you more than $1,000 per month (or slightly more depending on the annual amount set by the Social Security Administration) and involves more than minimal duties.
• You must have a “severe” impairment, which is a mental or physical condition that is severe enough that it significantly limits your mental or physical ability to do basic work activities. Basic work activities include: understanding and performing simple instructions; sitting, standing, reaching, pushing and lifting; and handling routine changes in the work setting.
• Your impairment must be established through medically acceptable diagnostic techniques, and must be expected to last or have lasted at least 12 months or result in death.
• You must not be capable of doing any work you performed, including your easiest job, in the last 15 years. The California Social Security Administration will evaluate by comparing your current ability to work (or “residual functional capacity”) to the mental and physical demands of the easiest job you’ve had in the last 15 years. It doesn’t matter if you would never be hired for that easy job today, or if that job no longer exists.
• You must not be able to do other work that exists in the national economy in significant numbers, considering your age, education, and work experience. The older you are, the easier it is to be found disabled under the Social Security Administration’s rules.

We do offer free consultations for disability cases only