Editor’s note: As of the morning of April 1st, most and likely all recipients discussed in this post have received their payments. So the issue appears to be an SSA portal reporting issue — as described below — rather than a disruption in payments.
I want to tread carefully here. But this seems potentially serious. I am in contact with two families in which the parents have an adult child with severe disabilities who receives SSI payments for their support. In each case, at some time today, their online Social Security portal switched to showing that the adult child was “not receiving benefits.” The full language is “This beneficiary is currently not receiving payments” under “Benefits & Payments.” In one case, the recipient’s payment is later than usual but might still come tomorrow. In the other case, the recipient lives at a facility which receives the payments directly. So that family doesn’t know yet whether there’s been a disruption in payments.
Each family contacted me independently and each is from a different part of the country — one in the Midwest, another in the Northeast. Each family is part of a loose local network of families or support groups of families with disabled adult children. And in each case multiple families in each support network started seeing the same thing today. In other words, this doesn’t seem like an isolated problem or a glitch tied to one family’s account or even a localized issue tied to one metropolitan area or a single care facility.
When it comes to the larger number of families who have seen this “not receiving benefits” language it seems like some have gotten payments on time and others have not. There’s no clear pattern. It also appears that this is impacting SSI and not SSDI even though many of the adult children receive both. Of course, we’re dealing with small sample sizes. So it’s possible SSDI might be affected too.
In the case of both families I am directly in touch with, the parents are themselves Social Security retirement beneficiaries. Their accounts are unaffected.
From what I can tell, it’s still possible that payments will arrive on the late side but not wildly late, at least in some cases. Perhaps the issue is just that a lot of people’s accounts, as of today, include language saying that payments have been cut off even though the payments are being or will still be made. As far as I can tell some families in these extended networks have received their monthly payments despite having this language in their portals.
For now, I’m trying to see if there are other families in similar situations (parents of adult children with severe disabilities who are on SSI and/or SSDI) and are seeing the same thing. If you’re seeing something similar, please contact me at talk at talkingpointsmemo dot com with the subject line “Social Security.” If you’d prefer more security you can reach me on Signal at joshtpm.99 or via encrypted email at joshtpm at protonmail dot com.
I will of course keep whatever personal information you share in confidence. But there’s really no need to share any personal information. I don’t need to know names or any other details of your family’s situation. I’m just trying to see if there are others who are seeing the same thing as I’ve described above.
