Social Security Opinion On Legal Effect Of Sex Change Surgery

An opinion, apparently from Social Security's Office of Regional Counsel:

You asked whether Leslie A. M~(the claimant), who was born a male and underwent sex reassignment surgery after marrying Janet L. G~ (the insured), could be considered the insured's spouse for purposes of a widower's lump sum death payment. ...

The claimant and the insured were domiciled in California at the time of the insured's death. In California, "[o]nly a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized." Cal. Fam. Code § 308.5. When the claimant and the insured married each other in 1973, they were a male and female, respectively. Thus, their marriage was clearly a valid marriage recognized under California law at its inception. ...

If a state recognizes an individual's ability to undergo a sex change, we must determine whether the individual has taken the appropriate action to obtain state recognition of the change. If the state does not recognize an individual's ability to undergo a sex change, or the individual has not followed the procedure set out by the state for it to recognize a sex change, we will find an individual to be the birth sex. Although both California and Montana have procedures to obtain state recognition of a sex change, the claimant did not avail herself of these procedures. ...

Since there is no state recognition of claimant's sex change, the claimant is considered a male, and the marriage between the claimant and the insured would remain a valid marriage between a male and female at the insured's death. Therefore, the claimant has the status of "spouse" for purposes of the lump sum death payment.

Kansas City Star: Social Security Cheats Ailing And Injured

From the Kansas City Star:

For years you’ve paid insurance premiums to protect yourself against unforeseen health problems. Yet when an accident or serious illness strikes, the insurer refuses to pay up.

That’s essentially theft, the kind of thing people expect the government to step in and stop.

But in this case, it is the government itself — Social Security, to be precise — that is cheating ailing and injured people out of the money to which they are entitled.

As detailed in a story in Sunday’s Kansas City Star, Social Security is victimizing large numbers of people by delaying their disability payments or refusing to pay them at all.

It’s an outrage.

The Last Hurrah For The Bush Social Security Plan

A Treasury Department press release:

Treasury Secretary and Managing Trustee Henry M. Paulson, Jr. will be joined by members of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees for a press briefing to discuss the release of the annual Trustees Reports on Tuesday.

Who
Secretary of Treasury and Managing Trustee Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
Secretary of Labor and Trustee Elaine L. Chao
Secretary of Health and Human Services and Trustee Michael Leavitt
Commissioner of Social Security and Trustee Michael J. Astrue

What
Press Conference to discuss Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports

When
Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 2:00 p.m. EDT

Where
Treasury Department
Media Room (Room 4121)
1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC

Note
Copies of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports will be available at the briefing. A pen and pad background briefing will follow the press conference at 2:30 p.m. in the same room.

Happy Easter

Waiting In Kansas City -- And Allsup Can Help

From the Kansas City Star:

If you get sick or hurt so badly that you may never work again, your last, desperate wisp of a safety net — Social Security disability benefits — is horribly tattered.

Apply for benefits now and, if statistical averages hold for the Kansas City area, it may be December 2009 before you see a check. That is if you are among the estimated one in three applicants who gets any money at all.

That wait is seven months longer than five years ago. ...

Vicki Kindred of Ferrelview in Platte County worked as a hotel and house cleaner before arthritis, fibromyalgia and other ailments made lifting mattresses, lugging sweepers and scrubbing toilets too painful. The 51-year-old woman has been trying since May 2000 to win disability benefits she believes she earned in the more than 20 years she worked previously.

Hers is a longer-than-average appeals process, she concedes. Both she and the first attorney she hired made some early mistakes trying to follow explicit but complex rules to qualify for benefits.

Loose, who is 61, worked in sales and middle management for nearly 40 years before being sidelined by diabetes, an arthritislike illness, hip replacement and finally, a nearly fatal heart attack in September 2005. He hired the Social Security and Medicare claims specialty firm Allsup Inc. to navigate the application maze for him.

Isn't This A Sign That Something Is Wrong?

I would say that this is a sign that attorneys in at least one area of New York find representing Social Security claimants unappealing. From the Albany Democrat-Herald:

Nearly 25 people — some of whom have first-hand experience with homelessness — spent Thursday learning to be advocates for individuals who need assistance getting approval for Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Income. ...

Terry Mastin of the Addictions and Mental Health Division said 10 similar workshops — each two days long — were held in 2006.

“Before the training, advocates were successful with about 30 percent of their SSI or SSDI applications and the waiting time averaged 11 months,” Mastin said. “After training, the success rate went up to 64 percent and the approval waiting time dropped to about three months.”

Vets Affected By Social Security Backlogs

From the Tacoma Weekly (emphasis added):

...[A] family-friendly G.I. rights rally this Saturday at the gates of Ft. Lewis will reach out to both veterans and active duty soldiers to assure them they are not alone in their struggles. ...

“Here on the fifth anniversary of the war, for America it’s really the service men and women who are paying the biggest price,” said co-organizer Tom McCarthy. ...

McCarthy talked about the “disgraceful lack of resources” at home for those fighting the war, particularly backlogs at the Social Security Administration. “We hear a lot about the VA (Veterans Administration) backlog, but not so much about backlogs at the Social Security Administration. This affects veterans as well as those coming back from Iraq who need to access those benefits.”

Social Security Managers Association Newsletter

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) has issued its January 2008 newsletter. It contains an interesting interview with David Rust, Social Security's Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Disability and Income Support Programs (ODISP).

Fraud In Hawaii

From the Honolulu Advertiser:

A 47-year-old man was sentenced last month to eight months imprisonment and three years supervised release for theft offenses related to fraudulent receipt of his dead father's Social Security benefits, the U.S. attorney's office for Hawai'i announced today.

No Match Rules Coming Back -- Unchanged

While this may be an excellent immigration enforcement technique, the Social Security Administration is not ready for all the calls and visits it will get from U.S. citizens who will inadvertently fall afoul of this plan -- if it comes to pass. From the Associated Press:

The Homeland Security Department on Friday offered a lengthy defense of its proposed program that would force employers to fire workers whose names don't match their Social Security numbers, and said it would try again to have the rules enacted into law.

A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the rules in October, saying the proposal would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs to comply with the regulation that the government hasn't evaluated, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in time would lose their jobs, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote.

In a 44-page "supplemental" document released late Friday, the department attempted to address several of the judge's concerns.

Among other things, the document "outlines clear steps an employer may take in response to receiving a letter from the Social Security Administration indicating that an employee's name does not match the Social Security number on file," the department said. If businesses follow the guidance in the No-Match Rule, the department said they will have "safe harbor" from the letter being used against them.

The last line of the 44-page document says the department intends to "repromulgate, without change," the same set of rules the judge blocked in October. ...

Chertoff said the department has also filed an appeal of the October ruling, and is pursuing both tracks - revised rules and the legal appeal - "simultaneously to get a resolution as quickly as possible."