Social Security tries to make Dad's summer as bad as last year's, and kind of ruin mine as well

[cimorene]

You probably remember that my mom is a giant flake one of whose habits is to send me completely incomprehensible emails from time to time. So when she sent me this the other day, I wasn't immediately hugely worried, because she's usually got something (or everything) confused:

Soc Security now wants all the money they gave us back.  It was ^0k.  10k of it we paid in taxes, I think-- actually, daddy thinks.  I think it was 20K.  So when we refile we can get it back immediatement, and immediately pay that part.

But then my Dad emailed me to ask was it true that my residence permit now being based upon family status as the common-law spouse of my better half, I can stay in the country without €6000 from them next fall, because

Social Security says we have to repay a lot of money that they paid us in the last two years.  We are going to probably have to do this in very large monthly installments...

But he didn't find it necessary, apparently, to explain anything about what had actually happened, or what was actually wrong or GOING to happen. I'm pretty sure that, far from trying to spare my virgin ears, it somehow didn't seem pertinent or necessary or interesting to him, or something. That was when I started to freak out and asked what the hell was going on.

What was going on was, in chronological order, this:

1. My dad is quadriplegic due to a spinal cord injury incurred while on the job, and was getting some disability money from SS. 


2. SS sent him something two years ago to indicate he no longer qualified for benefits (why? I don't know) and a form for Dad to fill out to stop them. He filled it out correctly and sent it back. 


3. The payments didn't stop.


4. Dad called them and pointed out that the payments were supposed to stop. They brushed aside his clear and incontrovertible point that he no longer qualified and that he had clearly indicated as much and that this was all at their instigation. They told him that if the benefits are supposed to stop, they will stop, and don't worry about it (or bother us). 


5. Two years later (like, now), they finally decide to stop them... retroactively. And demand back two years' worth of them. 


6. Apparently this is legal so long as the benefitee won't have to starve to death or whatever.

...

What the fuck.

Reaction paragraph deleted due to me still being wordless with rage, worry, etc.

(Note: this also means I can't go home this fall, almost certainly.)

Comments

[norah.livejournal.com]

Insult after insult just seem completely unavoidable after the initial disaster of injury.

God, isn't that just one of the truest things I have ever read about disability.

Good luck to everyone in your family, and I'm thinking of you all.