Quote:
Originally Posted by legalmania
Did you lose the weight because you were hungry or because you wanted to? Want to hear a really stupid rule, I was going to start a thread on this. If you are married and your spouse dies, you have to apply for disability within 7 years of his death, or 7 years after your kids stop getting survivor benefits. I'm not kidding that is a real rule. So if your husband dies when you are 25 the kids are all grown at 46 you have till 53 to become disabled. So the 911 victims , the gulf oil spill victims, the Iraq War, I'm sure they have no idea this rule exists. I don't know what they have to gain by having all these strange rules.
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The entire point of survivor benefits is to replace the lost income of the worker for minor children and a widow(er) who is unable to work because she (he) is taking care of the minor children or because she (he) is unable to work because of a disability. Survivor benefits were never designed to provide a life long benefit for able bodied adults and if a widow/widower chose to stay out of the workforce after her/his child turned 16 and they were still able bodied, why should they qualify for disabled widow's benefits 8 years later? Why didn't they go to work and earn their own Social Security credits?
Also, the scenerio mentioned above is mathematically incorrect: Mother's benefits stop when the youngest child turns 16 so a widow at 25 would only get benefits through age 41.
And why can't the 41 year old, able bodied, not disabled adult go to work? It is highly likely that if the spouse had not died, the family would have been better off and the non-working spouse may never have needed to go into the work force. But it is also possible that the deceased may have chosen to get a divorce and become a deadbeat parent.
SSA cannot cover all possible scenerios with a equal amount of parity. Just not possible.
About 10 or 20 years ago, SSA did ease up the rules on the level of severity of the disabling condition for disabled widows and allowed men to qualify as disabled widowers. That was not part of the original legislation.