Submitted by the Bond & Botes Law Offices - Tuesday, February 2, 2016
As we’ve discussed in earlier blog posts, when you are awarded SSA disability benefits you occasionally will receive a past-due monetary lump sum, i.e. the cumulative monthly money you should have been drawing all along if you were approved at the time you filed your disability claim. This goes for adults as well as children.
Child Expenditures are Regulated
Once you receive the past-due monetary lump sum, however, what you can spend it on sharply diverges as children’s expenditures are tightly regulated by the SSA, and effectively audited annually. Adult benefits are not.
First off, the child’s funds have to be deposited in a “dedicated account,” one that is used only for the child’s disability benefits. There are several other requirements that have to be met that the SSA details on its website.
Child Disability Benefits Can Be Spent On
Now then, what can you spend your child’s past-due monetary lump sum on? The SSA website lists these items as well: medical treatment, education, personal needs, special equipment, housing modification and therapy. That’s it. The SSA reserves the right to review any possible additional expenditures of the child’s past-due monetary lump sum not expressly listed and approve or disapprove of same. Good luck on that one.
At the end of the year, you will have to submit documentation and a report accounting for everything you have spent. And that means everything. You may be removed as the designated payee, i.e. the person who is in charge of your child’s funds, if you do not comply or have misused the funds. Consider yourself warned!
If you or your child have been denied SSA disability benefits or suffer from a severe impairment that is expected to last more than twelve months and that prevents you from doing any of your past or other work or is causing developmental delay in your child, please contact our office nearest to you to set up a free consultation appointment to discuss your situation.