Ask Larry

How Can I Get Social Security To Correct My Son's Benefit Rate?

My husband and I are both permanently disabled. Our kids get ss from my record because I make more than he does. My daughter aged out 7/19 when she graduated high school. We were on the family max benefit. I called SS hotline and was told my son would be receiving half of hers added to his as of 8/19. We never heard anything so in December we went to the local SS office and they told us that was not true. So why would they tell us it would? Also both kid's COLA for 2019 way entered wrong and they got 802 instead of 824 as the 2019 cola stated. Started calling in May of 2019 about the 22.00 diff. And was told it was sent to the processing dept and would take to 8 weeks and verified they were supposed to be getting 824. Now here we are in 2020 and my son's COLA for 2020 was calculated off of the wrong amount in 2019. When we went to SS office in December they said the supervisor was sending a 10 day notice to that dept to get it done because they owe us $, still havent heard a thing. We really need that money. Thank you for your time!

Hi,

I don't have enough information to know whether or not your son's benefit amount should have been increased when your daughter's benefits stopped. If both you and your husband receive Social Security disability (SSDI) benefits, then the family maximums on both of your accounts could likely be combined when determining the amount of your children's benefits. That may have resulted in your children being able to receive their full rates even when they were both drawing benefits, in which case your son's benefit rate wouldn't go up as a result of your daughter's benefits stopping.

In any case, though, there's probably nothing more that you can do to speed up Social Security's processing. Corrections of the kind you've described must be processed through one of Social Security's payment centers, and the payment centers always have a large number of backlogged cases to work. You could try contacting the offices of one of your congressional representatives to see if they would be willing to make an inquiry with Social Security on your behalf, but I can't promise you that would expedite matters.

Best, Jerry

Category: 
Posted: 
Mar 29 2020 - 7:24pm
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