I’ve mentioned in other threads that I am the guardian of my adult (46 years old) intellectually disabled brother. He lives in a group home and receives social security and a monthly salary from the consignment store where he sweeps the floor. Since he also receives Medicaid benefits, he is limited to the amount of cash assets that he can have. I think the limit is $2000.
Our parents died from covid last November. At some point, Stephen’s monthly social security benefit doubled from around $700/month to over $1500/month currently. Would the increase be due to our parent’s deaths? Stephen has not been a dependent of theirs for several years and he’s well over any age that I can find on the SSA website when it comes to survivor benefits.
Has anything else happened (stimulus, change to Social Security, etc) that might have caused the increase? I know that it seems weird to be complaining about having too much money but it really is an issue. We’ve bought everything that we can think of for him (I had a thread about that too) and we’re running out of ideas. I’d donate it or invest it but that would run afoul of Medicaid rules.
Within a family, a child can receive up to half of the parent’s full retirement or disability benefit. If a child receives survivors benefits, they can get up to 75 percent of the deceased parent’s basic Social Security benefit.
Just a snippet, read the whole thing.
Thanks. I saw that document before but missed the “became disabled before age 22” part. I guess that explains it but it still leaves me with a complicated situation. I guess I need to speak with a lawyer and have Stephen pay for it.
When my father died, Mom got a big raise in her Social Security. Because she was also receiving money from other sources, she thought the raise was an error and called Social Security to be told that everything was in order. Next, the amount started changing and she would call every time, just to be told that everything was in order. She made an appointment and went to the office and talked to someone to be told that everything was in order.
After over five years, she started getting threatening letters from Social Security demanding that she instantly pay off the rather large over payment they thought she owed. Of course she couldn’t do that, so they started taking a large amount out of her monthly check. I think she gets just over 400 a month now.
I hope your battle goes better and faster than her’s did.
While you’re looking into it, save the money so that you can pay it back if necessary. Possibly put it into a separate account, if you can. You need to protect yourself against allegations of fraud.
I was overpaid a benefit (in the UK - carers’ allowance) for a couple of months, and simply didn’t have time to call them up to try and deal with it (they can be 2 hour long phone calls before you even get through, and I am, actually, still a carer as well as working). I’d reported my change in income online not long after I started work, and had screenshots of that as well as the email receipts.
They kept paying me, and I just viewed it as money to pay back to them when they realised their error. It wasn’t my money.
Eventually they sent me a letter asking me for everything overpaid back - no problem - and the letter also said there was a civil penalty of £0. I was still concerned about having a “civil penalty,” even if didn’t actually cost me anything, so I phoned them up, and they said that I only had to pay back the two weeks between me starting work and notifying them of the change. The rest was their error, and mine to keep.
They were very reasonable and sensible, but part of it was that I had a screenshot of me submitting the claim and could read parts of it out to them. There was one detail that they didn’t have to hand because (as is often the case) there were system lags, but mine fitted their format and with everything else they had it was clear to actual human being on the end of the line that it wasn’t a faked number.
So… Make sure you’re above board in everything, and keep records to prove it. Make notes of phone conversations so that you can refer back to what was said by who and when. Even handwritten notes help.
I hope all of this advice is overkill, but a lot of benefit systems assume fraud, and you start from a point of arguing against that.
I second putting the extra money into a separate account, and document everything.
Unfortunately, I’m not currently on my brother’s bank account (I need to work on that) so I can’t save anything and the money has already been spent so there’s nothing to save at this point.
The good news is that one of the administrators of Stephen’s group home has emailed me information about an ABLE account which works kind of like a education savings account but doesn’t count against state or federal benefits. It looks like that will be the path we take.
ABLE Account
if hes disabled he’ll still get benefits from your parents… my cousin is 44 and she gets about 900 a month 150 is from SSI and the rest is from her deceased fathers’ retirement since he didn’t survive to collect it
In my case my father is retired and still alive and they switched me from SSI to SSA and I get 1180 or so a month and he pays for 80-90 percent of it out of his retirement account
Hes not missing much as his UAW/GM pension is way more than what ssa pays me