For nearly four decades, people receiving Supplemental Security Income in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont had an extra layer of protection when they rented a home from a relative at a modest price. That protection came from a 1989 federal appeals court ruling, and the Social Security Administration has now formally rescinded the internal ruling…

A federal watchdog says Social Security spent more money chasing down some overpayments than it recovered from them. The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General reviewed a sample of small overpayments and found the agency spent roughly $4.6 million on collection efforts that brought back only about $2.6 million, a gap of nearly…

Social Security’s administrative sanctions program exists to punish people who lie to get benefits, not to cut off a legitimate check before someone has had a real chance to fight it. A new audit from the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General found the agency got that balance wrong far more often than…

Two federal retirement checks moved by different amounts this year, even though both increases were calculated from the same government inflation report. Annuitants who retired under the Civil Service Retirement System received a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase, while those who retired under the newer Federal Employees Retirement System received 2.0 percent. For a household living…

Social Security has taken a stack of paperwork that once traveled by mail and moved it into the personal online account instead. Starting this month, three hearing-related disability forms, a real-time case tracker and 26 additional notice types are available inside my Social Security, the portal now used by more than 100 million account holders.…

Two pieces of the three-month calculation that decides how much larger Social Security checks grow next year are now sitting in the government’s own data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the August inflation numbers on September 11, adding a second data point to a math problem that will not be finished until one more…

Social Security has quietly closed the book on a piece of internal guidance that has shaped how the agency treats reduced rent for Supplemental Security Income recipients since the George H.W. Bush administration. A notice signed by the agency’s general counsel and published in the Federal Register on August 31, 2026, formally rescinds Acquiescence Ruling…

A serious heart condition severe enough to qualify for Social Security disability benefits will soon be judged against a different rulebook. The Social Security Administration has finalized a rewrite of the medical criteria used to evaluate cardiovascular disorders in disability claims, the first comprehensive update to those rules since 2006, and the new version takes…

The Social Security Administration has rewritten the rulebook it uses to decide whether an 18-to-25-year-old counts as disabled, replacing guidance the agency had followed since 2011. The new ruling, SSR 26-2p, takes effect October 1, 2026, and reaches three separate groups at once: teenagers filing a first disability claim of their own, disabled children who…

Nearly every year, new retirees are surprised to learn that claiming Social Security before full retirement age doesn’t guarantee they keep every dollar of it if they’re still earning a paycheck. A rule called the retirement earnings test can withhold part of the benefit once outside income crosses a yearly limit, and the math shifts…