My dad died two months ago in March while I was in school out of state. He was a great guy, always managed the family's finances, did all of our taxes, and pretty much did all of the dirty business when it came to managing money. He was an immigrant who came into the country with nothing and managed to work his way up building a family, a house, and savings. He earned good money because of his career choice, but unfortunately, he only worked for 9 years, according to his Social Security Statement. He stopped working in 2008 after he lost his job. Ever since then, he was pretty much a stay at home dad taking care of me since I was only 9 years old. My mom maintained her job and earned enough to get us by, but it was a struggle and it was not very easy. He ended up never getting a job again.
When I turned 16, he had a stroke. For the next 4 years, his health deteriorated more and more. His mental capability was diminished and he developed other problems that I don't feel comfortable mentioning. Eventually, he had a heart attack and died on the spot.
Bills, mortgage, and anything else related to our assets got passed on to me since my mom knows nothing about these kinds of things. I've developed a system to help myself maintain the same grip that my dad had, but it's a work in progress.
We were denied the $255 death benefit from Social Security, which is absolutely ridiculous. I found his old Social Security statement from 2008, when he last held a job with 36 credits. Reading it, it says that he has enough credits to retire, get disability benefits, survivors benefits, etc. Then, every year after that, the requirement to get these benefits increased until the required credits was 40. My thinking was that he was holding off on retiring early and wanted to leave the SS benefits until maybe next year so that he could maximize the amount he gets. He put a good amount of money into SS with his salary. Then he got screwed by SS and could never land a new job because of his health and since he was taking care of me and everything else around the house.
I don't know what to do. I don't even know if I have a valid argument here. It just pisses me off knowing that this man put all of this work into his family and ensuring that we have a good future, and then the government goes ahead and takes all of the money and tells us to frig off. I'm going in to the local branch tomorrow with my mom and hopefully we could get someone more knowledgeable to advise us. Any help is appreciated, and I will update this when we come back.
*Also throwaway account because reasons.
Submitted May 15, 2017 at 01:22AM by SocialSecuritySucks http://ift.tt/2qiRxw9
