New Laws To Protect People With Disabilities Receiving Social Security Benefits

A new law has just been signed that will place greater oversight on representative payees who manage Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits. The law is officially titled Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018.

The new law will prevent individuals with certain criminal backgrounds from acting as a representative payee. Also the beneficiaries will now have input as to who their representative payee might be.

Also there will be more reviews of representative payees.

The new law will eliminate a requirement that parents or spouses living with a person with a disability complete an annual accounting form for representative payees.

According to the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General, some 6.2 million individuals or organizations act as representative payees on behalf of about 8 million beneficiaries.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts continuing disability reviews (CDR) of individuals receiving Social Security Disabilty.

The goal of this legislation is to protect disabled individuals from being exploited.