We scheduled our first meeting with the SSA a couple months prior to his 18th birthday. Originally, we were told we should apply prior to his 18th birthday so that we could start to receive the income when he turned 18. Unfortunately, when we had the meeting we were told that they would consider our income and we would have to reapply after he turned 18 years old.
Our second meeting was back on April 30th, a few weeks after our son had turned 18. In that meeting, we had all of the forms filled out ahead of time. There were a few questions that we had to answer while the SSA representative took our application. As the meeting came to a close, we were told that we would get a letter from the Maryland Disability Determination Services office and that the whole process would take 3-6 months.
Within a week, we received a letter from the office along with another form that we would have to fill out for our son. We had 10 days to return it otherwise we would be denied benefits. Naturally, we filled it out as soon as we got it. Our doctors also received letter from the office requesting various medical information.
About two weeks ago, we received a letter from Disability Determination stating that they had approved our claim and that we would need to go to the meeting we had today at SSA. We answered a few more questions and learned of some of the requirements to maintain the benefits. They told us they would be processing the claim this week. The last thing we needed to do was to set up a checking account for my son with me as the representative payee.
It looks like our claim will be approved and we will be receiving a payment going back to April 30th. We set up direct deposit for the account, and soon I hope to have the extra funds to care for our son. I checked the SSA website, and it looks like he will receive $698 per month for his benefit. This will be a tremendous help for our family.
Congratulations.
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