• Disabled children receiving Supplemental Security Income can also receive some child support.serious child image by Maxim Petrichuk from Fotolia.com
  
  The Supplemental Security Income program pays benefits to blind, disabled and aged individuals with limited income and resources, including disabled children of any age. Income for children includes child support payments from absent parents. When absent parents fail to pay child support, amounts past due accrue. When these arrears finally reach an SSI-eligible child, they reduce the child’s SSI benefits. Special rules apply when the child receives arrears after attaining age 18.
  
  

Support is Income

• Section 1612 of Title XVI of the Social Security Act provides a definition of what is income that reduces Supplemental Security Income benefits. The same section of the law discusses the exclusions that allow recipients to keep part of their income before it starts to reduce their benefits. Among these income exclusions is one-third of child support payments. This allows a child to receive some benefit from the child support. Two-thirds of all child support received, whether paid when due or as an arrearage, is income that affects SSI benefits.
  
  

Child Becomes Adult

• A lawsuit settlement in 2002 changed the rules regarding back child support and SSI when the child turns age 18 before receiving the arrearage. Back pay affects the child only when received directly from the absent parent who owed the support, or the court that collected the funds from the parent. If the absent parent or court sent the funds to the beneficiary's parent, only the amounts that the parent turns over to the child count as income. Prior to reaching age 18, the payments count as income if paid to the custodial parent on the child's behalf. Since the beneficiary no longer meets the definition of a child for SSI purposes, the entire amount of back child support received is income; the one-third child-support exclusion does not apply.
  
  

Parent is Beneficiary

• When the parent receiving the arrearage on behalf of a child who has turned 18 gives all of it to the child beneficiary, it is not income to the parent. If the parent is an SSI beneficiary, the support will not affect her SSI. However, if the parent keeps any of the back child support, any amount she retains is income that reduces her SSI benefit.
  
  

Child Beneficiary Deceased

• If the child dies before receiving back child support, any arrearage paid to the child's parent is income to the parent and would affect the parent's Supplemental Security Income benefits.