eSpecially Ben

A four-year old boy, named Ben and also with red hair, is facing a serious illness, brain cancer. His mother tells his story in her blog,  Pray for Ben Sauer . They are looking for a miracle through prayers and support. The story is intense and inspiring - the mom shares openly the raw emotions she feels as their situation unfolds.

The follow-up meeting with Social Security Administration was this week. We spent the meeting reviewing paperwork, answering questions and planning for our next phone meeting. Basically, everything is still up in the air; however, I do believe that we will have to file a Waiver for Over Payment. I do not think that anything I provided will change the outcome. In order for the Waiver to be approved, I will have to prove that (1) we do not have the money to pay it back (not hard) AND that  (2) the over payment was not our fault (hard but not impossible). With Supplemental Security Income, a family may not have more than $5000 in resources. This includes any money in the bank (checking and savings), stocks and bonds, vehicles and a number of other items. One car is excluded off the bat, but any other car either has to be financed with its equity counting toward the $5000 resource limit. We do have a second car that is paid for and the value is $4500. We can have $500 in checking and

In October, I received a letter from Social Security Administration saying that Ben no longer qualified for SSI AND we owed a very large over payment for two years of SSI that Ben did receive. The letter showed that we owned two of the same car. I knew this was wrong and immediately wrote a letter. I thought it was a computer glitch. Over the past five months, I have met with Social Security, spoke with several people over the phone and wrote countless letters providing documentation to show the cars we actually owned and filed appeals for the decision to revoke Ben's SSI during the two year period they think we owned these two cars. Tomorrow I have another meeting. I am hoping we can get this straightened out. This situation has caused a lot of stress for us and has taken a tremendous amount of our time trying to unravel the problem. I have not written a post in almost a month, partially because my brain power has been consumed with this issue and the bathroom saga (qualifies