God bless you and your family, community, and our nation as we humbly seek His face and turn back to Him.

Our family was informed that we would no longer receive SSI supplementation to care for our disabled children, due to an error that was made by an SSI agent. In addition they want to charge us $87,744... and just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas! God bless us, every one! We do have faith the God will see us through. This has already been a rough year, but Got is good, and we are willing to work and praise Him regardless of our temporary status.

We are a family of 10, 8 children(age 13-0), and 2 parents. Married for coming on 15 years. Our oldest 4 children are on the autism spectrum and have been qualified for SSI for over 10 years(although we haven't qualified financially for all 10 years, ie I made too much money, and we had too much equity in property or vehicles).We came to the realization in 2016 we had to make some serious changes for our family to function, so I quit a promising career working for Amazon after the birth of our 4th child, moved to the Midwest to be near my aging mother, I became a School bus driver and substitute school teacher for our tiny school district, we made sure our kids could be taken care of with two parent care givers, and parred down our assets to make a more modest lifestyle to help our kids now, and made our kids our primary life's work.

In the process we purchased a very small 27 acre farm, and needed to have a sub-compact tractor(BX-25D) to install fencing, plant and remove trees, maintain and repair our driveway, mow our yard area to keep it clear of rattlesnakes and other pests, using the backhoe for various small digging jobs for us and our neighbors, and to generally beautify and care for our property(We have started many young fruit frees in a hope of having a fruit stand that can be primarily run by and support our disabled children as they grow up). The tractor was valued at approximately $11,000, but with the loan we had it was not considered an asset, but after about 2 years of payments on the tractor loan, it got low enough that in SSI's eyes, it was considered a liquid asset(ie available to spend), and would likely make it so that our SSI would stop(SSI being 100% or 0%, on or off regarding the asset limits, unlike income where SSI supplementation will taper off somewhat if your income goes up). When we contacted our SSI agent they asked if we used the tractor to make some income or to produce food for our family, we indicated that were, and they called us back later and said that we could exempt the tractor as a source of income/food, so we didn't need to refinance or trade it in; apparently that was the mistake, because found out last month that it had to be our PRIMARY source of income or food(which it isn't yet)! So when they did an audit this year on our assets, they discovered that our tractor was never supposed to be exempted, at least in the way that it was, and the auditing agent, the same person who had exempted it, then removed the exemption and retroactively added it to our assets for the past 2 YEARS, and since it will be paid for next year, the tractor is almost enough on it's own to drop us from SSI regardless of any other assets, equipment/tools, or cars(including a totaled 20 year old Dodge Neon, that was being valued at $1000 during the same time period. An old 1995 Dodge farm truck that was valued by them at $2900 one month, and then $5800 the next. Just as examples of how their accurate valuations work, and what non-sense it makes).

Since they retroactively are applying the change to our "assets" for the past 2 YEARS that we will not be able to change, making it so that we will have to pay back $87,744! Even though we were told for those 2 years that we were in compliance with the rules, as stupid as they may be, but regarding the amount of non-exempt "assets" we are allowed to have. The SSI assets limit is all in, or all out, and they don't actually tell us what the limit is; but we know it's approximately $11,000, that includes a $3000 cash cap(this cap does not include equity in our primary residence, and primary vehicle; with everything beside personal effects, everything else being considered an "asset" that they will assess a value to, regardless of actual cash value, including our checking account which they have counted after they deposited the supplemental income for the month).

At this point we are still in the preliminary stages of trying to figure this whole thing out, but all suplementation has been stopped until it is figured out. We will likely have to get a lawyer to try and fight the repayment issues, but we are making enough to make sure we don't lose our home, but we have very little money for anything else at this point. We have some food storage, and are working on getting food stamps in the interim. If we reach our campaign goal that will get us through the month. We are also scrambling to try and find a job that I can work from home or at night, to allow us to continue to care for our kids without having to try and hire help during the day. With Christmas break coming up fast we are really stressed trying to find something that will work; and if we do, we may just forgo going back on SSI once we get it all figured out, to avoid these kinds of problems in the future, since we have no intention of making our children destitute and dependent on the State for the rest of their lives. We just thought we'd have more lead up time, and be able to feather the transition better than dropping it suddenly days before the holiday season starts. Haha.

Our family is very grateful for any help or prayers on our behalf. We know God will see us through, we will still try and bless others as we are able, and we are so grateful to be surrounded by humble and loving people who may also be struggling but are doing what they can for us and our community. I have felt the love of Christ through the trials we've had this year, I know that He will not leave us comfortless, and if we will press forward with faith, we will be victorious.

This campaign is unpublished.

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