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There’s been a lot of buzz in the media lately about purported fraud occurring in the Social Security Disability arena. A particularly crazy set of facts allegedly occurred several years ago in West Virginia, and it has caught the attention of Congress.

Effective October 9, 2013, a full staff had returned to work at our local Columbus Office of Adjudication and Review and it was anticipated that activities would resume “as normal.”

As the gears of our government machine grind down to (at least a partial) halt, there are many questions about how the Social Security Administration and its disability program will be affected.

I’ve been busy, friends! So busy in fact that I’m a month late in passing along this press release from the Acting Commissioner, which was released shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the DOMA….

I was at the Columbus hearing office recently and counted the number of Claimant’s Representatives who were present in the lobby. There were eight. Of the eight, ONLY TWO of us were from the Columbus area. The rest had either flown or driven in from offices in other states or remote cities, and several were completely unfamiliar to me. I don’t know how many of them were attorneys versus non-attorneys, but a few of them appeared to be quite young.

I can’t count how many times a client has excitedly handed me a note from their doctor, a scribble on a prescription pad that reads “My patient is completely disabled.”

It was the spring of 2011. Ken and I were still newlyweds and we were preparing to merge our law practices. And we heard the above question. A lot. Many of our friends felt that working with a spouse would be “too much time together,” or that business decision-making might create too much discord within a marriage.