Usually, Social Security takes away benefits for a disabled person with a claim on a parent's work record as soon as they marry. The big exception is if they marry another disabled adult who is claiming benefits from a parent's work record.

That's because spouses have a legal duty to support one another.

What happens in reality of course is that it makes it impossible for people to get married because they would be financially sunk once the disabled person has ZERO income, still can't work, and becomes a financial drag on the marriage.

I'm quite certain that there are lots of people out there who avoid getting married and cohabitate because the government does stuff like this to people.

Oh, and if Social Security finds out that you're cohabitating with a person who you are intimate with and "could get married", they can treat you like you did get married and take benefits away even if you aren't married.

So, the way I see it, it's heads they win, tails you lose.

But it's probably hard to prove that such a situation exists. I've heard of senior citizens who are in a similar predicament (benefits from a deceased spouse) who cohabitate.

I'm not going to say it's the right or wrong thing to do, but these are Social Security's policies and what people in the real world are doing because of it.

Social Security, in many cases, is the classic example of a poverty trap.