Your Questions About Factors Affecting your Social Security Benefits
Q: I have a business under my name but my spouse runs it. Can I have still apply for social security benefits?
A: As defined by the Social Security Administration, disability is the "inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity." They determine substantial gainful activity according to the National Average Wage Index, which gives a dollar amount per month. They consider a person to be working any day that he or she "is the owner or part owner of a trade or business even if he or she does not actually work in the trade or business or receive any income from it."
The money your business makes may have an effect on your social security disability. If that income goes over the predetermined substantial gainful activity (SGA) level, the SSA may consider it a substantial income. The SSA determines this SGA level by doing a comparison of the income of your business to the income you received before you became disabled, as well as to the income of a healthy individual doing the same business.
Q: What will happen to my claim if I die while in the process of applying for benefits?
A: The SSA states that when an individual who was or could have been eligible to receive social security benefits becomes deceased, surviving family member can request a Lump Sum Death Payment. What does this mean? If you die in the while your claim for social security benefits is pending, your family may be able to get some of the benefits you would have been eligible to receive after the waiting period. To do this, surviving family members need to prove that their deceased relative did or could have qualified for social security benefits in the month that they died.
Lump Sum Death Payment of social security benefits is available only to particular surviving family members. As part of the application process, the SSA will request information about the deceased's Social Security record and application (if they applied for social security benefits). They will also request evidence of the deceased's disability beginning at 14 months before the date of death.
Q: What will happen to my social security benefits, once I am already on them, and I die?
A: A person who has worked and paid social security taxes may be eligible for survivor's benefits upon their death. For one's family to be eligible for survivor's benefits, up to 10 years of work is needed, depending on one's age. The following relatives may be eligible for survivors' social security benefits:
? A widow or widower, who will receive full benefits at retirement age, and reduced benefits starting at 60 ? A disabled spouse aged 50 or over ? Unmarried children under 18 (or up to 19 if attending high school) ? Currently disabled children who were disabled at less than 22 years of age ? Dependent parents over 62 years of age.
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