My brother has been on California State SSI for autism for the last 10 years, and he absolutely has to (no joke, HAS TO) spend all 720 bucks of his SSI every month, because if he puts it in the bank he risks losing his SSI altogether.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.
And here’s the funnest part of the story!
One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.
The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.
He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.
Please, legal side of Tumblr, tell me what positive reasoning this law has?