Losing SSI and SSDI Benefits While Incarcerated

Losing SSI and SSDI Benefits While Incarcerated

Your husband goes to jail and you figure his Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits will at least help with the bills even though he is not home to receive them. When the payments stop, there are four reasons why this may happen.  Here are the four stages of the process: Related: What type of arrest warrants will cause Benefits to stop?
  1. Prisons and jails throughout the U.S. turn over information about inmates to the Social Security Administration on a monthly basis.
  2. The Social Security Administration then cross-references that information with its database and clicks the suspend payment button on any matches for people who have been locked up for a full 30 calendar days.
  3. The jails and prisons receive reward payments from the federal government for each inmate that gets benefits stopped or suspended.
  4. The payment is $400 per inmate as long as the proper information is sent to Social Security Offices within the first 30 days of the inmate’s arrival. If the information doesn’t come until between day 31 and day 90, the facility still receives $200. After 90 days, they don’t get a payment.
Final thoughts: Because the federal government pays jails and prisons to help stop SSI and SSDI payments to inmates, jail administrators are pretty diligent about sending those reports on time.