Many attorneys charge an up-front fee for their professional services; this is not the case when you hire a disability attorney in Missouri. A disability attorney receives his or her fee when you receive a favorable outcome with your case; in the legal world this is called a “contingency” fee. When you hire a disability attorney this is how it will work:
The agreement:
When you first hire the attorney, regardless of whether you are filing for SSDI or SSI benefits you will enter into an agreement with the attorney, this agreement gives the Social Security Administration the authority to pay the legal fees directly to your attorney in the event your claim is approved. To ensure that your attorney gets the proper fee the SSA will review the agreement to ensure it adheres to all the guidelines set down by the administration.
What is the fee?
Your disability attorney in Missouri will receive 25 percent of the past due benefits that you are awarded up to a maximum of $6,000. Note that the fee is paid from your past due benefits, if there are none your attorney will not be paid anything but this rarely happens.
What is important from your point of view is that you can hire competent legal help and it won’t cost you anything as the legal fee is eventually paid from your award. You will not be responsible for paying your attorney directly, the SSA will take the fee from your first check which is your back pay, the balance will be sent to your account. Your attorney gets no further payments.
What is back pay?
Once your application for disability benefits has been approved the administration determine the back pay that you are owed. In the event you applied for SSDI this includes benefits backdated from the date of approval to the date your disability began for a maximum of one year. In the event you applied for SSI the benefits you will receive are calculated from the approval date to the month following the month in which you applied.
As your disability attorney in Missouri is limited to charging either 25 percent of the back pay up to $6,000 maximum it is quite easy to determine his or her legal fee. For arguments sake, let’s say your back pay was determined to be $10,000. Your attorney will receive 25 percent of this amount; $2,500 and you will get the remaining $7,500.
As you can see, hiring a seasoned disability attorney is the best way to deal with what can be a very complicated task.
If you are disabled, either physically or mentally you can apply for cash benefits from Social Security. If you are looking for a seasoned disability attorney in Missouri to handle your case you are invited to contact the Grundy Disability Group, LLC.
