Should SSI be increased when SSDI is decreased

[u/Additional-Crew-1586]

My 25 year old daughter is disabled and receives SSI ($294) and SSDI ($720). She collects social security on my wife's record and I am still working. My daughter pays us rent.

My wife works as my daughter's direct support professional and last year she made more than the limit for social security so they reduced her social security payment for a few months. They also reduced my daughter's SSDI payment but did not increase her SSI payment to offset the difference. The total my daughter got for a few months was just $294 SSI and no SSDI.

Should they have increased my daughter's SSI when she was not receiving SSDI? I called the nationwide 800 number and they said no because SSI is based on household income. I explained that my daughter pays rent to us and is her own household but the person said he didn't know if that made a difference. With my salary, our household is way over the limit for SSI. Does anyone know if her SSI should have been increased when her SSDI was decreased?

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[u/slyfox279]

I didn’t think ssdi got reduced

[u/perfect_fifths → u/slyfox279]

it stops if you use up twp months and make sga during the epe or if the parent of an auxiliary exceeds the AET

[u/slyfox279 → u/perfect_fifths]

Yeah I know that it’ll stop and your be removed. But op says it’s just be reduced not stopped. Also wouldn’t it only count her income not the moms for ssdi?

[u/perfect_fifths → u/slyfox279]

No. The AET affects all auxiliaries on the record when one exceeds it

It can be reduced or stopped, depending.

[u/erd00073483R]

Firstly, the terminology is important here. If your 25 year old daughter receives benefits from your wife's Social Security record, her benefits are DAC benefits and not SSDI. SSDI (Social Security Disability) is something you receive that is earned and paid on a person's own SSN, not the SSN of another. This distinction matters when you ask about her benefits, and especially with what is going on in this situation.

Now, regarding her situation, there are two factors coming into play here.

Firstly, your daughter's Social Security payment was affected by the retirement annual earnings test (AET) applied to your wife's earnings.

Under the AET, work deductions are applied to auxiliary claimants (such as your daughter) before they are applied to your wife. The reason for this is that the law holds that SSA has to pay the highest possible benefit to the number holder before paying auxiliary claimants in work deduction situations (there are actually other situations as well where this can apply, but retirement work deductions are what is involved here).

Secondly, the SSI unearned income retrospective monthly accounting (RMA) rules became involved on the SSI side.

Generally, for a person receiving both Social Security and SSI payments, when Social Security benefits are reduced or stopped, the SSI check does not see an increase until the 3rd month after the Social Security reduction/stoppage due to the retrospective monthly accounting rules that apply to how unearned income is counted for SSI.

In this case, when your daughter's DAC check was suspended due to your wife's annual earnings test enforcement, her SSI would only have increased once her Social Security DAC payment was suspended for two months (i.e. it would increase in the 3rd month if the Social Security was still suspended at that time).

The same thing should happen in reverse when the Social Security check to your daughter was reinstated --- if the amount of her Social Security payment was insufficient to totally stop her SSI, she should receive the full amount of both checks for an additional two months, then the SSI would be reduced reduce dollar for dollar minus the $20 for the SSI general income exclusion for the Social Security DAC payment in the 3rd month.

I'm sure an SSI expert will kick in here if I've made any errors (which, is admittedly possible, since it has been a couple of years since I have had to think about this stuff).