Disabled Child Benefits Social Security Disability Lawyer

Seeking a Free Consultation with one of Texas’ Houston Social Security Disability Lawyers? Call the Social Security Disability Lawyer Reshard Alexander today at 713.766.3322.

Social Security Disability Lawyer Reshard Alexander helps disabled persons receive the care and compensation they deserve.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments for children with disabilities SSI makes monthly payments to people with low income and limited resources who are 65 or older, or blind, or disabled.

Your child, if younger than age 18, can qualify if they have a medical condition
or a combination of conditions that meets Social Security’s definition of disability
for children, and if his or her income and resources fall within the eligibility
limits. The amount of the SSI payment is different from state to state because
some states add to the SSI payment.
Your local Social Security office can tell you more about your state’s total SSI payment.

SSI rules about income and resources

Your child’s income and resources will be considered when deciding if your child
is eligible for SSI. Income and resources of family members living in the child’s household also are taken into consideration. These rules apply if your child lives at home.
They also apply if your child is away at school but returns home from time to
time and is subject to your control. If your child’s income and resources,
or the income and resources of family members living in the child’s household,
are more than the amount allowed, we will deny the child’s application for
SSI payments.
We limit the monthly SSI payment to $30 when a child is in a medical facility, and health insurance pays for his or her care.

SSI rules about disability

Your child must meet all of the following requirements to be considered disabled
and, therefore, medically eligible for SSI:

• The child, who is not blind, must not be working or earning more than
$1,220 a month in 2019. A child who is blind must not be working
or earning more than $2,040. (This earnings amount usually changes
every year.)

• The child must have a medical condition, or a combination of
conditions, that results in “marked and severe functional limitations.” This means that the condition(s) must very seriously limit the child’s activities.

• The child’s condition(s) must have been disabling, or be expected to be disabling, for at least 12 months; or the condition(s) must be expected to result in death. Providing information about your child’s condition.

When you apply for SSI payments for your child based on a disability, we will ask you for detailed information about the child’s medical condition and about how it affects the child’s ability to perform daily activities. We also will ask you to give permission to the doctors, teachers, therapists, and other professionals who have information about your child’s condition to send the information to us.
If you have any of your child’s medical or school records, please bring them with you. This will help speed up the decision-making process.

What happens next?

We send all of the information you give us to the Disability Determination Services office in your state. Doctors and other trained staff in that state agency will review the information and will request your child’s medical and school records, and any other information needed to decide if your child meets our criteria for disability.
If the state agency can’t make a disability determination using only the medical information, school records, and other facts they have, they may ask you to take your child for a medical examination or test. We will pay for the exam or test. We may make immediate SSI payments to your child.

The state agency may take three to five months to decide if your child meets our criteria for disability. For some medical conditions, however, we make SSI payments right away, and for up to six months, while the state agency decides if your child has a qualifying disability.

Following are some of the conditions that may qualify:
• Total blindness
• Total deafness
• Cerebral palsy
• Down syndrome
• Muscular dystrophy
• Severe intellectual disability (child age 4 or older)
• Symptomatic HIV infection
• Birth weight below 2 pounds, 10 ounces — We evaluate low birth weight in infants from birth to attainment of age 1 and failure to thrive in infants and toddlers from birth to attainment of age 3. We use the infant’s birth weight as documented by an original or certified copy of the infant’s birth certificate or by a medical record signed by a physician.

If your child has one of the qualifying conditions, they will get SSI payments
right away. If the state agency ultimately decides that your child’s disability is not
severe enough for SSI, you won’t have to pay back the SSI payments that your
child got.

SSI Disability Reviews

After your child starts receiving SSI, the law requires that the Social Security Administration review your child’s medical condition from time to time to
verify that his or her disability still meets their criteria. The review must occur:

• At least every three years for children younger than age 18 whose conditions are expected to improve; and

• By age 1 for babies who are getting SSI payments because of their low
birth weight. If we determine their medical condition isn’t expected to
improve by their first birthday, we may schedule the review for a later date.
We may perform a disability review even if your child’s condition isn’t expected
to improve. When we do a review, you must present evidence that your
child’s disability still severely limits his or her daily activities and that your child
has been receiving treatment that’s considered medically necessary for his
or her medical condition.

What happens when your child turns age 18

In the SSI program, a child becomes an adult at age 18, and we use different
medical and nonmedical rules when deciding if an adult can get SSI disability
payments. For example, we don’t count the income and resources of family
members, except for a spouse, when deciding whether an adult meets the
financial limits for SSI. We count only the adult’s and spouse’s income and
resources. We also use the disability rules for adults when deciding whether
an adult is disabled.

• If your child is already receiving SSI payments, we must review the child’s
the medical condition when they turn age 18. We usually do this review during
the one-year period that begins on your child’s 18th birthday. We will
use the adult disability rules to decide whether your 18-year-old is eligible
for SSI.

• Even if your child wasn’t eligible for SSI before his or her 18th birthday
because of you and your spouse had too much income or too many
resources, they may become eligible for SSI at age 18.

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits for adults disabled since childhood

The SSDI program pays benefits to adults who have a disability that began
before they became 22-years-old. We consider this SSDI benefit as a “child’s”
benefit because it’s paid on a parent’s Social Security earnings record.
For a disabled adult to become entitled to this “child” benefit, one of his or
her parents:

• Must be receiving Social Security retirement or disability benefits; or

• Must have died and have worked enough to qualify for Social Security.
Children who were receiving benefits as a minor child on a parent’s Social Security record may be eligible to continue receiving benefits on that
parent’s record upon reaching age 18 if they are disabled. We make the disability
determination using the disability rules for adults.
SSDI disabled adult “child” benefits continue as long as the individual
remains disabled. Marriage of the disabled adult “child” may affect eligibility
for this benefit. Your child doesn’t need to have worked to get these benefits.

How we determine if your “child” is disabled and entitled to SSDI benefits

If your child is age 18 or older, we will evaluate his or her disability in the same
way we would determine disability for any adult. We send the application to
the Disability Determination Services in your state that makes the disability
determination for us.