Shoreline

Actually I just looked at my card to see my eligability date and now I remeber, You can't apply for SSD untill you have been out for 5 months and a doc says you have no chance of returning to work within a year. So I became elgiable 2 years and 5 months after my disability date. MY last dI became disabled on 4-1-99 and became eligable on 9-1-2001, 2 years and 5 months. It's 2 years from the time your eligable to apply for SSD when you become eligable for medicare.
Hope this helps.
Take care, Dave

PS, You will get your back pay directly and then have to go to social services to aply for dependnet benefits, Dependents can recieve up to 1/2 of what your disability income is, however they do not get medicare, dependents may be entitled to a state version of medicare like Medicaid, depending on household income, but medicaid has a very low income eligabilility, so my daughter isn't coverd by either medical program, state or fed. There is also a max amount you can recieve from SSD monthly, regardless of what you made, if your receving the max, your dependnets will not be eligable or may only make up the diference between what you recieve and what the max benefit is. It was 2400 a month back in 2001.

Just a side not, SSD does have anual cost of living increases, however every cost of living increase has been equaled by a medicare part B increase, so I 'm not recieving a penny more than I did when I was orignally aproved. If you used an attorney , he's eligable to recieve a part of your back pay but is limited by a cap, I believe the cap was 4k at the time.

The attorney has nothing to due with obtaining dependent back pay or benefits, so my attorney didn't get a peiece of my daughters, but he got the max he was allowed from my back pay anyway plus expenses, such as the depositions he took from my docs, that charge a nominal fee if they are reasonable. I paid one doc 125 and another 200 for their depo. My surgeon wanted his OR fee to give a half hour telephone depo, which as 1500 bucks. Obviously I didn't use him. WE were already on the outs by the time that came up.

In addition to the capped amount attorneys can charge and keep from your back pay, they can bill you for expenses such as depos and copying. MY attorney tried billing me $700 for copying fees, I realize my file is like a book, but we negotiated the copying fee to a flat number due to the size of my medical file, 2100 pages. It ads up at 30cents a page which I refused. I settled with him for $200 on the coppying fees and ask for that job at 30 cents a page.
I think I could handle a part time coppying job at 30 cents a page, Heck, I would even supply the paper.LOL