SSI and SSDI - When and how does income count?
 

Yes, they HAVE to look at what your husband makes if you don't qualify to file for SSDI (where you have to have worked X-number of quarters in the X-number of years prior to getting your disability). If you haven't paid in enough, recently enough, you just don't anything under SSDI.

With SSI, they have to look at the income that comes into the household and any family members living in the home who contribute financially ... AND they look at total family savings and assests. You have to be poor. REALLY poor.

My parents have a friend who has brittle diabetes, a long list of ailments, a big box of medications if she has to go anywhere overnight.

Before her husband died, poor as they were, there was still too much income for them, as a couple or her as an individual, to qualify. So in desperation, one of her girlfriends let her use her address and phone number -- and she and her husband "officially separated". I don't know how it went, if she applied for separate maintenance or what (she WAS entitled to some of his income - she was a housewife), but she was now income qualified because what he had to give her to live on every month brought her in under the limit.

She got approved for SSI and Medicaid. When she was old enough for Social Security and Medicare, she did not file so she could stay on SSI and Medicaid.

Unfortunately, after her husband died, she thought it looked very good (her Social Security retirement monthly payment doubling & getting a small monthly retirement check of her husband's), so she dropped SSI and filed for Social Security. Unfortunately, she came in a few dollars over the limit with that tiny retirement check. so she immediately lost Medicaid, too. To pay her medical bills, she had to purchase an Medicare-Supplement insurance policy. She ended up worse than before.

She got knocked down and broke both legs - into the nursing home for 6 months. She could not go back to where she used to live, and she finally got some HUD housing (ground floor apartment) that she could afford. She applied to all the drug companies who could help her by giving her free meds, and a church in another nearby community covers another one or two. She lives hand to mouth, but she stays alive.

Most of America's citizens are rapidly headed for retirement with virtually nothing in savings ... and retirement with our extended lifespans will be a nightmare for them.

The only way I will tap into my former husband's social security is if he dies - When I would then get as much as he was getting before dying. But I would then move to a country with a low cost of living, cheap drugs and care (and not too much war or unrest) so I could live comfortably. If I stay here in the states, unless I was living where I could get under a great HMO like Humana, I would eventually be left destitute from medical expenses and ever-rising rents. Just the truth.

Teri