After working for 9 years, a North Carolina woman decided she would quit her job and stay at home to raise her kids. She spent 10 years taking care of the kids and then she came down with a severe case of the flu. She was rushed to the hospital where she fought for her life, but that was only the beginning of her ordeal.
Why Don’t Stay at Home Moms Qualify for SSDI?
The life of this mother from North Carolina changed completely when she left the hospital. During her struggle with the flu, her limbs became septic. Doctors were force to amputate one leg above the knee, her foot, and both arms in order to save her life. She was suddenly living with disabilities, so she turned to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for help.
She applied for Social Security Disability insurance (SSDI), and under normal circumstances her claim would have been rushed through, but there was a problem. The woman had only worked and paid payroll taxes for nine years, and she had been out of the workforce for over five years. That left her short of the necessary work credits she needed to qualify for benefits based on her own work record. Her claim was denied.
How Important Is Your Work History to the SSA?
Sometimes stay at home parents become disabled but find out that their own work history isn’t enough to qualify them for disability benefits. For many of these people, applying for SSDI on their spouse’s work record is actually the simple solution. But what do you do if your spouse’s record also doesn’t qualify for Social Security benefits?
When neither spouse’s records qualify them for benefits, the process for applying becomes even longer as many applicants have to wait until their spouse does qualify. However, that wait comes before the long wait for benefits approval. There is some push from many legal advocates to change this. The contribution of stay at home parents is a significant to the economy, and many feel they should be covered because of this contribution. What do you think?
Should stay at home parents also qualify for SSDI benefits? Should they be forced to wait for their spouse’s records to qualify? Log on to Facebook and Twitter to let us know, and keep following your Tulsa disability attorneys as we keep asking the hard questions on our disability blog.
