Social Security Program For Those With Dementia

"...If your parent or another loved one has dementia, how can you ensure those Social Security benefits be managed properly? Turns out, the Social Security Administration has a little-known program to help.

Congress first authorized Social Security to deal with this problem in 1939, giving the agency authority to appoint what are called “representative payees” for beneficiaries incapable of managing the income; the payees are not government employees.

Once a Representative Payee is designated, that person is required to decide how to spend a beneficiary’s Social Security income and to keep records of that spending...

“Representative Payee can be a wonderful tool particularly for a person whose assets are only Social Security benefits,” says Marit Anne Peterson, program director at the Minnesota Elder Justice Center in St. Paul, Minn.

Most of the 5.5 million participants in Social Security’s Representative Payee Program are children and disabled adults, but roughly 500,000 beneficiaries in retirement also have representative payees...."


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