My mother is getting up there in age, and is suffering from numerous ailments. She and I are both on Social Security Disability; her for physical reasons, me for mental health reasons. She is my SSA representative payee.
If she dies, what happens to my benefits? Do I need a new representative payee?
It’s been 2 days so it’s time for me to take a stab at this one. I did a Google search based on the question you asked and couldn’t find an answer.
Can I assume that your “representative payee” is someone that the court designated to receive your SSI payments instead of you for some reason? If that’s the case, I assume the court would have to designate a new, and presumably living, representative payee to take over that role. Or am I completely misunderstanding what is going?
I’m not sure; it’s been so long. It’s my mother. It goes into a bank account that has both our names on it. Technically speaking, the debit card with my name on it receives her SSI payments, and the one with her name on it receives mine.
I would contact Social Security and see if you can find someone there who can help you. If they can’t, you may have to contact a lawyer who works on SSI issues to sort it out. Someone should know how to deal with this.
A representative payee is only needed if the recipient is a minor or legally incompetent. For example, my wife is SSI rep payee for our disabled adult daughter who the court has determined to be incompetent (we are jointly her guardians).
Are you considered to be legally competent? If so, you don’t actually need a rep payee. Did your benefits start when you were a minor and that is why your mother is (still) rep payee?
What I don’t understand is that based on your second post you and your mother are each other’s rep payee. Is that correct?
ETA: Changing rep payee is done through the SSA office. There are community based organizations (approved by SSA) that can be your rep payee for a monthly fee.
No. She’s mine, but I’m not hers.
What concerns me is that if I make the suggestion that I no longer need a representative payee, Social Security might make another determination as to whether I’m even eligible to receive disability benefits at all.
I don’t understand this - if the payments go into a joint bank account and both debit cards are attached to the joint account , either card will have access to all the money in that account. There isn’t any way to have some money go to your card and some to your mother’s if the payments are going to a joint account.
It is possible to have more than one account associated with a single debit card - for example my debit card is associated with both a joint account and an account solely in my name and my husband’s card has access to the joint account and an account in only his name. Either one of us can get money from the joint account but I can’t take money from his. Are you sure your situation isn’t something like that , and the accounts somehow got reversed so that your payment goes into your mother’s account and hers goes into yours?
You can change your representative payee at any time, even after their death. It just involves filling out some paperwork. The main issue I encountered was that they stopped payments for a month to the old account, and then gave backpay in the second month. I could see this being an issue if you were living paycheck to paycheck.
You can instead set up a backup representative payee, though I don’t know the details. Contact your local Social Security office.