Thanks for sharing your experience, winic1. I'm not going to lie, that sounds horrible and I am praying it doesn't happen to me. With the back pay, I'm going to have an accountant ammend previous tax returns to include it to avoid a huge problem in April. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply.

Contact your attorney. Make him/her work for his cut off YOUR backpay.
The attorney will be able to find out (or he/she may already know) if there is a serious backlog of direct deposit payments in your state.

It is reasonable to expect the first payment 30-60 days from the date of the WRITTEN favorable decision (a verbal decision has zero value for the payment center). It is reasonable to expect retroactive benefits to be paid 60-90 days after the written decision.

There is no one in the payment center twiddling their fingers, waiting for your written decision to arrive. Every component of SSA has a higher workload than can be taken care of in an expedititious manner. Every part of SSA has too much work to do.

If you even filed an SSI claim, even one that got denied, the existance of that claim can create a delay by the payment center in issuing retroactive benefits to be sure that no SSI windfall offset will apply.

Janke, when I mentioned getting a decision from the judge, I meant a written decision received in the mail. I realize there is nobody twiddling their fingers, but I also realize the average turnaround time right now seems to be 30 days for Baltimore. A representative of Social Security told me that they have had my case in the processing center since June 25th and their records show notations of them beginning work on it last Tuesday. My question was how long does it actually take for them to process it once they begin working it, not once it was placed in their queue.

Maybe I sound like I'm not being reasonable, but please try and remember that you don't know my situation or why I'm so persistent. I am 36 years old, married with 4 kids and disabled through no fault of my own. I would give anything to be able to work again and support my family, yet I can't and I am currently in default on many of my bills. Oh, and there was never an SSI claim.

You stated that your big question was how long does it usually take. That is the question I tried to answer. When I was talking about reasonable expectations, I considered the backlogs in the payment center, the cutoff dates for checks to be issued, all the work that still has to be done by the payment center before the benefits are paid. I actually understand your desire to get paid as soon as possible, but none of that changes that every component of SSA has always had excessive amounts of work to do that make it difficult to impossible to pay you on your schedule.

Asking how long a case will take is kind of like asking how long it will take a traffic jam to clear up or how long it will take in one grocery line over another. There are variables in your claim that may or may not be evident in another claim. The claims authorizer on your claim may be a recently promoted benefits authorizer who needs additional review or it could be a 20 year SSA veteran who can make all decisions indepedently. The claims rep who took your claim in the initial inteview may have never gotten all relevent proofs that are required for the non-medical adjudication. Or made an error that needs resolution. Impossible to guess. I stand by my answer.

I find it a bit odd that you would not have filed for SSI, a public assistance disability program, when you are default on many bills. Perhaps whatever income you do have is still too high for SSI but not enough for your living expenses. But it is your life and no one can or should force you to apply for SSI. But even though the payment computations for SSI are done in your local office, you still have to provide sufficient evidence of income and resources, and the staff in your local office has to have time to adjudicate your claim. SSI is not always paid more quickly that SSDI.

Just wanted to let everyone know, my backpay is in my bank account! It took a little over 30 days! My regular payment will start next month. Thank you all for your time and help.

Unusual for it to take that short of time. Nice for you that it worked out so well.

Not really. I got mine 3-4 weeks after my final approval letter back in 2005. It could have been sooner. I first checked my acct at the 4th week when I discovered my back pay.