5 Facts About Your Supplemental Security Income Payments While You Are Incarcerated

5 Facts About Your Supplemental Security Income Payments While You Are Incarcerated

In many cases, you don’t have control over the number of days you spend in jail, but if you are planning on not bonding out in the hopes of building time on a future sentence or getting a time served release, be sure to watch the calendar so you do not get your payments suspended.
  1. You do not need to be convicted to lose the payments. They will be stopped after you have been in jail for a calendar month, with or without a conviction. For example, if you are arrested May 1, your benefits stop June 1, because you have spent a calendar month incarcerated. If you are arrested May 10 your benefits won’t stop until July 1, because your calendar month is June 1 to June 30.
  2. If you are ultimately found innocent and released, you will still lose the payments for the months you were in jail waiting for court. Those payments will not be retroactively given to you.
  3. You can get payments reinstated as long as you get out in less than 12 months. Keep in mind it is 12 months from your first calendar incarceration month, not 12 months from your conviction.
  4. Many jails and prisons have “pre-release” forms that allow you to start the reinstatement paperwork before you are released. The payments won’t start until after you are released but it begins that process, which can take some time. If not, you can file reinstatement forms once you are released.
  5. If you are incarcerated for more than 12 months, your supplemental security income case will be closed. If you wish to get benefits again, you will have to begin the entire application and qualifying process over again as if you were never on it before.
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