Guess what? I received a letter on Friday, September 21, 2007 from the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (the ALJ Courts)….here comes the knife twisting….which I SHOULD have received in September 2005, not NOW, which is exactly 2 years LATER. DAMMIT. Better late than never. And it’s looking increasingly like the SSA is back-peddling big time as well, so I shouldn’t complain. It could always be worse dealing with them, as I unfortunately know, so I’ll count my blessings while things are still on-track.
 
Anyway, here comes the punchline - this Law Court has contacted my previous lawyer, not my current ones, regarding my eligibility for a Law Court Hearing. DOI??!!
 
While I can see how this easily happened, because my previous lawyer & I submitted the 501 (Request for hearing) in January 2007, I am still pretty shocked that, even though the SSA is under the scrutiny of & pressure [...]

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Now, I didn’t really like the fact that our mailman comes very late in the day as a rule, delivering our mail around 3:30pm most days but much later on others, like he did on Friday, September 14, 2007. I’m especially irritated that he delivered so late on Friday, after I called my lawyers, because that’s when I received a letter from the Office of the Chief Law Judge in Falls Church VA…this is just getting stoo-hoopid now…
 
Anyway, this letter states that the O.I.O. has determined that I DO have enough credits to be eligible for SSDI and that my claim has been sent to Voorhees, NJ to the Law Court to be scheduled for a hearing…WHAT??!
 
WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOIN’ ON NOW??
 
Do these mother-fuckers realize that this should have happened 2 YEARS AGO? Talk about being highly pissed off here?! I seriously hope [...]

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I spoke to one of my team lawyers today to confirm the documents I had faxed and mailed this week; they got all the faxes and the notes regarding faxes I had sent to their Hauppauge office, but not the CD with my UK medical yet. They should receive this disc on Monday.
 
I also asked when they sent the appeal to the Notice of Disapproved Claim; it was sent to the SSA on Sept. 7, 2007. They have also filed the 1696 (Appointment of Legal Representation) and 3288 (Consent for Release of Information <— my personal favorite)! I’m assuming the latter form is to allow my lawyers to receive anything and everything regarding my effed-up disability claims, including a hard copy of the ENTIRE claim file, which is nice.
 
In addition, I asked if they could clarify what is going to happen next because I am still confused about why my [...]

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As you can see, the entries here are getting further apart; still, I am fighting my worsening health problems to provide reasonable details of this ongoing fiasco. Speaking of which, the SSI department at the Trenton SSA office is now telling me that it appears I will be eligible for SSI and they’re urging me to get my forms & paperwork in to them by the deadline of Sept. 20, 2007 or this application will be suspended.
 
I didn’t want to go through with this SSI benefit for several reasons, the main one being that if I am awarded this benefit the SSA may expect me to leave it at that. I hope they’re not that stupid…I will not stop until I get answers AND restitution regarding my two combined disability claims which have been disapproved on a technicality after 5 years of extreme stress and financial hardship.
 
In the [...]

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Now, I know I probably shouldn’t be speculating and/or researching this, but my previous research into the SSA’s twisted, gnarled system appears to have proved informative at the very least. I did some reading this morning in the HALLEX pages (I believe these are the program operations for the SSA) and I stumbled upon section I-1-5/Litigation-related Inquiries. I clicked on the link for I-1-5-4, which was titled ’Hearings Office Process’ seeing as my case has now been forwarded to a Hearings Office, apparently in Falls Church, VA.
 
Well, in the above named section, it looks as though this particular Hearings Office is the Office of the Chief Administrative Law Judge. I don’t know if there are multiple HOs and ALJs at this location who handle different levels of cases, but I read through all of the I-5 links and they all appear to relate to some of the stages my claim has gone thorugh, including Inquiries from a Member of Congress and Regional [...]

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