The answer is quite complex but I would say that under no circumstances can a person actually receive a benefit check in less than probably about two months. Social Security does have special provisions to speed up a case in which a person is terminally ill. And those cases can be speeded up quite rapidly but given the amount of time to process the checks and so forth it is very unlikely that a person can receive a check in probably less than about two months. But how long does a typical case take? The answer is it  depends on which level of this appeal process the case is won. At the initial level I would say that people sometimes fairly frequently get checks within four or five months of the date of their application. Now what happens if you have to go to a hearing with a social Security Disability Judge? The answer to how long really depends on a number of factors. There are approximately a thousand Social Security Judges in the country with probably a hundred and twenty five or more offices. These various offices all have backlogs. And so how long does it take to get to a hearing? Some of the cases in some states you can get to a hearing in maybe seven or eight months after your application. In other parts of the country where the Judges are very far behind you could be talking about two and a half or three years. So how long it takes depends on a lot of factors including unfortunately in what part of the country you happen to live.