She lives alone in Montana and I want to care for her in California. Her payee says it would be difficult to change payees, that I should send her invoices and she would mail checks. We don't have a lot of expenses so her rent here would easily be 1/3 of our bills. I'm not exactly sure how to figure the rent amount or her personal spending so where do I go to find out how to be a payee and is it all that difficult?
Being Rep Payee involves going to Social Security and providing to them documentation that the person cannot act for themselves in any way and therefore needs someone managing all the finances. It would likely involve your being also financial POA.
This all has a very steep learning curve and because you are dealing with government and banks they are going to be ON YOU about everything. This isn't something that you can manage without a lot of thought and knowledge. You might start by going to Montana and learning exactly what the Rep Payee does there for the cousin, and then go together to an appointment at the Social Security office to discuss.
A move this monumental? I see troubled waters a plenty ahead in every wise. I was POA and Trustee for my brother when he was well, still, but was newly diagnosed with probable early Lewy's Dementia. Even as well, as organized, and as cooperative as he was it was a JOB, and I did find the learning curve steep indeed.
If this is what you’re thinking about, there will be all sorts of issues in doing this beyond the rep payee change. Just how did this person get assigned to be the rep payee? And how competent and cognitive is your cousin?
Rep payee can be changed but it’s on the SSA recipient to initiate the actions needed to request this from SSA…. unless they are unable to do so and there has been an agency or a person legally assigned to be this. Did something like this happen? Like maybe your cousin lives in a group home and the administrator is their rep payee? Or they live in some type of supportive housing and there is a State agency involved who assigned cousin a rep payee? Or is this a friendly neighbor or church member who is cousins rep payee? What your cousins own decision making abilities becomes super important as to what type of challenges there will be do SSA rep payee switch, to move her legal residency and show you can provide for her care plan.
Easiest way to change rep payee would be for the SSA recipient to themselves go to an SSA office or call SSA or go onto their online SSA account and request a change of rep payee status. There is a form for this, SSA-11-BK. Your cousin has to be the one initiating the change and respond to SSA inquiries. The (hopefully) new rep payee is the one who fills out the form 11-BK. The old rep pay does not actually resign but it’s more their ability stops. fwiw SSA actually takes doing this quite seriously and they will do interviews with all concerned and look at the current rep payee compliance for reporting requirements, your background for suitability and if there is a compelling reason to change. Moving residency to another State would be a “compelling” reason. Fraud or misspending by the rep payee would be another. SSA makes a final determination based on a number of factors.
Who is this persons POA or guardian if developmental challenged. This is usually from birth. You going into something that you may not understand what your responsibilty will be. If cousin is on Medicaid, it does not go over state lines, you have to reapply and thats hard if your not POA or guardian. Being a SS payee does not go beyound that. At 73 cousin may need Medicaid and there is a five year lookback. If they have a Medicare Advantage, it may not go over State lines. You charging rent without proper documentation could produce penalties for cousin. You would be smart to talk to an elder lawyer.
To me a big challenge will be finding a facility that will take them as Medicaid only should they need a NH/SNF. NH do routinely so much health care billing to Medicare (flu shots, gait training, other therapy stuff, physician rounds, staff billing for care plan meetings, RX costs) and Medicare pays fairly decently for this. But having a resident who is LTC Medicaid for room&board and only Medicaid for health insurance is tough on a facilities bottom line.
SSI Federal base rate / FBR is $967 a month and it can be reduced based on their housing situation. Some States do additional $ to the Federal base rate & some States decrease to cover State administrative & Medicaid costs. If she is SSI, please please pls clearly research how CA deals with SSI and what documentation she will need to be able to go onto CA state supported Medicaid only health care services for those elderly on SSI and how available they are where you live.
fwiw SSI has a equation as to the maximum they can pay for “rent” and has equations as to $ reductions due to offsetting of income or other financial support. SSI is a real real real restrictive program.
A big issue for those on SSI for decades and for their POA/families is that they very often have never worked. So they do not have the 40 FICA Qtrs for MediCARE premium free Part A eligibility for health insurance. They may not have any FICA reported at all. So they are purely on Medicaid for health insurance. But providers tend to default to MediCARE for primary billing if they are over 65. So there’s constant billing snafus for elderly only on SSI & Medicaid. There may be more limited provider choices for those over age 65 who are not on Medicare. Please pls research this out throughly.
You say your cousin lives alone. So she must have some faculties. She will have a state caseworker thoug, this person needs to be called. This is who you should be talking to.
Think carefully about it though. Yes, taking in your developmentally disables cousin with Parkinson's disease will pass to your household income, but are you truly informed on what you'd be getting yourself into?