My mom is 67 and will be moving in with my husband and I soon. She will apply for SSI as she has no income nor any resources. She has not worked enough credits to draw any SSA. So we are hoping that she can receive SSI benefits since she meets the qualifications. My question is this, she is planning to pay money toward our mortgage and food costs as we cannot really afford her not to do so. If our mortgage is $1850 per month do we just divide that amount by the number of people living in the house and then that is what she pays towards the mortgage for her living with us? How do we ensure that she does not get a reduction in her SSI benefit? Are there any times where SSA states that they cannot afford to pay towards the mortgage because it is too high and then they still reduce her benefit? Any advice you can give I would appreciate.
Depending on what state you're in,she should automatically be eligible for SNAP.
Good luck
Your Mother has not worked in the US for over 10 yrs? Did she have a husband who did?
As for there not being enough for the mother to contribute to the household expenses. Of course there's enough. If she gets $1000 a month, her daughter should take $750 of that money and the food stamps she gets. Life isn't free.
HOWEVER
SS administration required to determine what her living situation is AND
if she is receiving any In-Kind support or maintenance (ISM)
AND
if so, SSI paid will be reduced depending on type of ISM.
In Kind support and maintenance will be rent, utilities, food. And SSA has a formula / equation to determine this based on information she or you will need to provide as to the $ amounts. And within “rent” the figures can be further calculated by something called PMV aka Presumed Maximum Value if the “rent” seems odd for SSA. PMV is set by census and federal cost of living data. There also is this type of data for food costs. The local SSA staff has some discretion on this. Whatever the case, She has to be able to retain some of her SSI $, she’s not supposed to pay it all on rent that you use to pay your mortgage. The figures have to be given to SSA as they can stop SSI payments if not done.
Below is an example from SSA on In-Kind aka ISM. Fwiw it’s a math division problem with the # of adults living in the home as the divisor, based on certain household expenses; & Household expenses are required basic items: rent, mortgage, utilities and food; so other property costs - taxes, insurance, wifi, maintenance, repairs - cannot be included as SSA costs based on “rent”.
So let’s say MeMaw, age 80, lives with her son and his wife and their adult daughter. 4 adults in the household. There is a mortgage of $700 & have an overall yearly average of electric $200, water $100 and food $600*. So household costs at $1600 month; then divided by 4 adults is $400 each. MeMaw can pay her son $400 a month and that is totally OK for SSA, so MeMaw keeps entire $943.00 SSI.
BUT
If MeMaw paid him only $200 then that’s an InKind to from her son and his wife as owners to her, so SSI will be reduced.
SSA does it by 1/3 Reduction Rule as their standard, so means $314.33 will be taken from MeMaws SSI $943 ck each month. Paid $628.67.
Again details will have to be submitted to SSA to determine payout. & there will be renewals. Expect to have to submit mortgage info. And SSA likes to see an actual Agreement between your mom and you & hubs as property owners as to all this.
There’s other things on SSI that matter for getting full on payment, Like if you go into the hospital over a set amount of days, the SSI will be reduced. In the hospital for the entire month, it’s reduced to $30.
As others said, SSI is low. I think if you are absolutely needing her $ to make basic household ends meet that is a pretty precarious position. Not sustainable as if something goes wrong.
She definitely will have to help pay rent, food, and utilities as we just cannot afford for her not to do so. The cost of food, utilities and everything else has skyrocketed so taking on another person to take care of is not something we can do without her contributing to the monthly household expenses.
If she's getting on SSI, then she will become eligible for food stamps and Medicaid if she doesn't get them already.
You do not have to let her or anyone else live in your house for free or sponge off of you.
Tell her straight that if she wants to live in your house, you will be taking two-thirds (2/3) of whatever her monthly income is. Also, she will have to contribute her food stamps towards the household food bill. This is not unreasonable.
You do not have to call what you charge her a month as payment towards your mortgage or anything else. She pays two-thirds of her monthly income to you if she wants to live in your house.
You also have to take into account that she may not even get approved for SSI. It's not so easy to get anymore like it was back in the day when younger people were able to get on it because they were too lazy to work or just didn't want to. Those days are long gone. If she does get approved for SSI, her benefit will not be affected because she has to pay for her room and board in your home.
Make sure her health information is recent, if not they'll set up and and pay for an exam to get recent medical (and/or mental) info to make a decision.
The process, she submits an application. The local SS office determines if she meets non medical part. If she does, it goes to the states DDD (Disability Determination Division) for medical and/or mental review. If there is not enough medical and/or mental info or it's not recent enough, they will arrange and pay for what is called a Consultative Examination (CE).
With this info, they'll decide approve or deny. If approved, the application will go back to SS local office to be sure still eligible under non medical. A final interview is involved, either in person or by phone. If everything checks out, SS computes how much she'll get and go from there. If the application is denied, the local SS office will keep the application for a time, in case there is an appeal.
Be forewarned, decisions for SSI can take on average 3-5 months (if everything is in order ).
Personal due to certain circumstances mine took over a year.
Hope this helps.
Good luck to you all!!
So what is going on for health insurance?
IF she has basically no real FICA based work history (which it seems to be as she’s going onto SSI and not SS retirement based payment) she will not qualify for the required 40 quarters needed to get Medicare Part A coverage for free, which the spills over to Medicare has to charge of between 30-39 qts @ $ 278 a mo In perpetuity or 29 or less quarters @ $506 a mom also in perpetuity. This in addition to the Part B at $178 a mo. At under 1K a month which you kinda need for her to pay as her share of living in your home expenses…. well there is no $ to pay any of the Medicare costs. Realize that Medicare is mucho importante as it pays for hospitalization and also hospice and both under Part A. And without Medicare, it will be a constant issue for billing as the default is they look 65+ Elderly = Medicare filing in some way.
if she’s managed to qualify for low income Medicaid as health insurance, that is great. But pls realize, there will likely be that every time she has to go get care outside of a low income type of community health clinic where everyone is on a Medicaid only (these will be geared for younger and their dependents) there will be an issue for billing. And should she need to go into a NH, they all are set up in some way to bill to Medicare & it is set up to be 3: Medicare and Medicaid as health insurance and LTC Medicaid program to pay for custodial care costs. So finding one that will do a purely only Medicaid to be paid will be challenging.
you mom is way young at 67, you want to know what the possible pitfalls are so you can plan accordingly. Esp as you yourself have a narrow financial footing.
fwiw a lot of us answering are your moms age OR OLDER, so we are dealing with parents in their 80’s and 90’s and even a few 100+!
And be aware that SSA - as far as I’m aware - first will do the search 2 c if - IF - mom has any SSA retirement income (or an ex did that she can attach to) that can be paid via that $ and this type of SSA $ is what normally mates to pay the Medicare premiums as both are Federal programs. Otherwise as she’s 67 - so over 62 so could do an SSA early retirement filing - it’s SSI at its very modest $943 which is SSAs Supplemental Security Income program baseline. But SSI does not - as far as I’m aware- mate up with Medicare. I think SSA has to run a comparison for best benefit paid….. so retirement based income VS supplemental Security Income / SSI.
If it’s purely SSI, then they are low income so go onto whatever your state has for Medicaid as health insurance low income folks. And for anything Medicaid, it’s all run uniquely by each State and she / you will have to file for whatever program seems to be she fits.
SSA is a really big Federal agency, try to read up on what’s what for SSA retirement income, SSDI which is Disability Income and SSI Supplemental Security Income. ((SSDI ends once they can file for age based retirement income from SSA.)) It becomes really important as they all have the ability to and documentation needed to tie into health Insurance in some way.