To be eligible for SSI benefits, a single disabled claimant must have limited income and resources.  After initial eligibility is determined, SSI eligibility for both categories is assessed on a month-by-month basis.

Income

When determining initial eligibility (and monthly eligibility thereafter), certain types of income are not counted by SSA.  After excluding these types of income, SSA arrives at what it calls your “countable income.”  This number is then subtracted from the Federal Benefit Rate ($674 for 2009 & 2010).  If your countable income exceeds the Federal Benefit Rate, you will not receive an SSI check for the following month.  If there is an amount left over, that amount would be your SSI benefit for the following month.

SSA categorizes income into four types:

1. Earned Income: gross wages or net income from self-employment that you earned during the previous month;
2. Unearned Income: any income you had during the month that was not earned. Some examples are:  cash received from family or friends, alimony and child support, pension income, unemployment benefits, state disability benefits, pension income, Social Security disability benefits;
3. In-Kind Income: the value assigned by SSA to any food or shelter that you received for free (or for less than what it would cost on the “open market”);
4. Deemed Income: this is the portion of your spouse’s income (for child cases, income from the parents) that SSA will presume is available to meet your support needs (or the disabled child’s needs in SSI child cases)

SSA treats earned income more favorably than the other types of income (by allowing more of it to be excluded from countable income).

Resources

These are assets such as bank accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate (other than your personal residence), and personal property.  If you have more than $2,000 in assets ($3,000 for a married couple), your initial SSI claim will be denied (or, if you have already been receiving SSI benefits, you will not receive an SSI check for that month).

Some resources do not count towards the financial limit, however.  Social Security does not count the following resources when determining whether you are over the SSI resource limit:

• The home you live in and the land it occupies
• Personal effects and household goods
• Wedding/engagement rings
• Life insurance policies with a combined face value of $1,500 or less
• Your car if used for transporting yourself or members of your household
• Retroactive SSI or Social Security Disability Benefits (if you use them within 9 months of receiving them)
• Burial plots for you and members of your immediate family
• Burial funds for yourself and your spouse (up to $1,500 each)

• SSI financial eligibility depends on meeting two tests: a resource (asset) test once, on the
• first moment of the first day of the month, and a monthly income test, counting any
• income received during any day of the month
• Once you are initially approved, SSI eligibility is measured month-by-month.

• Certain work-related expenses

Even if your resources exceed the SSI resources test, SSA will, in some situations, allow you to “spend down” your excess assets in order to qualify for SSI.  This is known as “conditional eligibility.”  After you apply for SSI, if you agree to sell or spend your excess resources within a specific time period (6 months for real estate; 3 months for liquid assets and personal property), you may be able to receive SSI benefits (and, more importantly for some claimants, access to Medicaid) while the property is being disposed of.   Two important caveats apply to this principle:

1. The property in question must be sold for “fair market value.” If you give away the excess resources (or sell them for less than they are really worth), you may be ineligible for SSI benefits for 36 months.
2. You may have to pay back some of the SSI benefits you received after the asset if solf.