Why Judges Say You’re ‘Not Credible’ in Disability Cases (Remastered from Aug 5, 2013)

0:20 The judge said I wasn't or you weren't credible because you could do things around the house. Why would the judge say that? Okay, in our last video, we talked about sitting, standing, and walking, and this is where and I kind of mentioned it a little bit when I was talking about and you're sitting at a hearing and you're sitting here saying, oh, I can't sit for ten to fifteen minutes, but then you can walk around the grocery store. That's kind of what I was referring to.

0:43 And this is more of an expansion of that discussion. For instance, one of the typically during the hearing, at some point, if you're saying that you have limitations that affect your ability to sit, stand, walk, crouch, neil, crawl and do things like that, you know, lifting and so forth, the court can use a one to one correlation. So, for instance, let me give it a good example. Let's say that you say I can't stand for more than five minutes at a time, but then I cook meals for my family of five. Now I'm gonna tell you, I know my lovely wife cooks for me, and I know she's in the kitchen just for the two of us for more than five minutes. So then you have to ask yourself, you're standing in your kitchen cooking for

1:27 a family of five. You're not gonna convince me that you're not gonna be able to stand longer than five minutes. But you have to be prepared to explain those things. This is why I tell people be detailed. Don't gloss over what you do. So when you're like, can you cook and cook a little something, but you got to specify if you know, well, well I cook. Like I had one client when she was like, oh, I cooked my family all the time. I said, I thought you can only stand five minutes or so, oh, well yeah, but you know, but I cook them all the time.

1:51 And I said, be specific, and so she broke it down. She has a couple of teenage daughters. They go and get the things out for her. She sits at the table and basically instructs them on how to do it, and every few minutes she stands up just to check to see if anything's burning, if it's too hot, if it needs to be rotated, things like that. But for the most part she does all the cooking from a seated position, but in the grander scheme of things. She's not cooking, her kids are or her husband will go and get things that are heavy out of the refrigerator, and her husband sets the table and moves and puts everything in place. So technically she's not cooking. She's directing people how to cook, and there are days when she

2:33 can't where she literally has to stay on the couch and tell them what to do from a distance. So in essence, she wasn't cooking for them, But the way she made it sound was, oh, I cooked for them all the time. If you just lift it there like that, then you're leaving it up to the decision maker to figure out on his or her own your limitation. Same thing.

2:55 Oh I can't crouch, I can't cry, I can't kneel or stew. Do you clean your bathroom? Yeah, guess what. Typically, cleaning your bathroom means getting on your knees and washing and scrubbing your tubs, cleaning your toilets, bobbing under these the sinks. Those are all bending, kneeling, crouching activities. Be specific and be prepared to explain how long. Let me back up a little bit, because I don't clean the bathtub my husband does. I don't clean behind the toilets.

3:20 My son does in terms of washing the toilets and everything like that, and the saying that's what my daughter does. Pretty much the only thing I do is I do a little light sweeping and I might mop, and if I have any problems, If I have any problems mopping, my daughter takes care of it. Well, that is a much different detail than saying, you know, I can't kneel a crouch, but then I can clean up the bathrooms.

3:41 You gotta be specific. You got to because what ends up happening is if let's take it even a greater flip side, Let's say, oh, I can only walk for five or ten minutes, but i'm but then I'm on my back. I can't I get rest, I can't move anywhere. Who goes to grocery shop? Oh my husband. I don't let them go by him. So if I go get the groceries, been necessary, they just a load of when I get home. So you got five people in the house and you go grocery shopping by yourself. Do you need the cart, the motorized cart? No, I just push the car up and down the aisles. I'll lean on it.

4:09 But I can go up and down the aisles. Now, mind you, you just sat there and testify that you can only walk for five minutes before you have to lay down because you're in so much pain. But then you're walking up and down the aisles. You figure you got a factor. Let's kind of be real here. You don't need a motorized cart. You got to get out your car. You've got to walk from your car to the grocery store. You got to get your cart. You've got to walk up and down the aisles to get the items that you need. You need to bring them there, you have to check them out, you have to walk them back out to the car, put them in the car, and roll off. That's gonna take longer than five minutes.

4:39 So guess what ends up happening. You say you can walk five minutes, but you just told the court, based on how much detail you do in your going grocery shop shopping, that it's probably reasonable that you can walk a lot longer than that. So now that whole I can only walk five minutes thing doesn't have as much weight to it considering what your activities are. I think a lot of times people don't think. Just think about what you do. I know it's not easy, and I don't want to insult anybody's intelligence when I make the statement.

5:09 Think about what you do in the context of how you do it, so you can explain it in relations to what you do.