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How Do the SSDI Age Requirements Affect Me?

You worked hard. You worked for years. Showing up every day, putting in hours and effort for your employer, supporting yourself and your family.

Then just about the worst thing happened: Severe health problems hit you and stole your ability to keep working and earning a living. 

If you’re over 50, this is scary. It’s hard to see how you can come back from the financial blow. But there is hope. Your age may mean it’s easier for you to get crucial help from Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits.

Benefits means monthly income assistance and a calmer, more stable life

But Social Security makes it extremely difficult to win benefits. It takes your age, puts it into a complicated formula that people call “the grid rules,” and only awards benefits if it decides there’s no way you can still work.

Get the Alabama Social Security Disability lawyers at The Clarkson Firm to walk you through this. Over 50, you should have a better chance of winning benefits. Make sure you get the full advantage of your age.

We’ve helped thousands of people in Birmingham, Gadsden, Montgomery, Mobile, North Alabama, the Black Belt, the Gulf Coast, Chattanooga, all of Tennessee, and the whole Southeast United States.

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Sitting at a dining room table, man uses a device to check his blood pressure. Applying for Social Security Disability over 50 requires information about your age, background and medical status. Sitting at a dining room table, man uses a device to check his blood pressure. Applying for Social Security Disability over 50 requires information about your age, background and medical status.

Putting the SSDI Age Requirements & SSDI Medical Requirements Together

Next, Social Security will insert your age group into the “grid.” Officially, Social Security doesn’t call it a grid, though you might hear people using that word. Social Security’s name for this is the “medical-vocational guidelines.”

But they do have a chart where your age category goes in one column, and other details about your circumstances go in other columns. In the last column, they conclude that you either have a disability that qualifies for benefits, or you don’t.

These are the types of information they feed into the chart: 

  • Your age category
  • Your education background
  • Your work experience
  • Skills that transfer to different jobs
  • Your day-to-day task ability
  • Whether you can perform sedentary, light, medium, or heavy work

Education categories include “limited,” “marginal,” “high school graduate” and “high school graduate or more.”

Work experience falls into categories such as “unskilled,” “semi-skilled” and “skilled.” And they consider whether the skills you have are a type you could use in different jobs (transferable), or if they aren’t transferable.

Your day-to-day task ability is something that Social Security calls your “residual functional capacity,” or RFC. Your RFC is a measure including how well you can stand, walk, lift, carry things, focus on tasks and more.

Using your RFC, Social Security then decides how strenuous of a job it thinks you can handle, from sedentary to heavy. They have definitions for all of these levels.

People at more senior ages who are deemed limited to sedentary or light work are more likely to win disability benefits. 

The higher your age, the easier it is to satisfy these rules. But you can see how this system is a complicated way to get at an answer about whether you can work or not.

Put an experienced Alabama disability attorney on your case. Your attorney can present your information in a way that satisfies Social Security’s confusing SSDI age requirements. And you pay no attorney fee until you win benefits

After years of working hard, being dedicated, supporting your family, and being productive—and in the face of major health setbacks—it’s time for you to get the support you need to lead a decent life.

Contact Us Today! »
Standing next to each other and looking at a cell phone in his hand, a man and woman smile. Clarkson Pennington Law disability attorneys can answer questions about getting Social Security Disability benefits.

How Does Social Security Disability Work? Get Answers.

Social Security Disability is a huge, complicated program that often doesn’t seem like it cares much about you and your needs. Can’t get answers to your questions? Your disability attorney from Clarkson Pennington Law is the one who truly cares and guides you. Talk to us.

Common Questions About SSD »
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“This is an outstanding law firm that I recommend highly. After my disability was denied, I was unsure of what disability attorney to contact. I decided it would be best to contact an attorney that lived near me. . . . I am so thankful I followed my instinct and notified Clarkson Pennington Law. They were professional, courteous, and kind, and immediately went to work for me. . . . They were successful in helping me obtain my disability. I will never be able to thank them enough.”

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