Certain members of your family may qualify for benefits based on your work. They include:

• Your spouse, if he or she is 62 or older;
• Your spouse, at any age if he or she is caring for a child of yours who is younger than age 16 or disabled;
• Your unmarried child, including an adopted child, or, in some cases, a stepchild or grandchild. The child must be younger than age 18 or younger than 19 if in elementary or secondary school full time; and
• Your unmarried child, age 18 or older, if he or she has a disability that started before age 22. (The child’s disability also must meet the definition of disability for adults.)

Benefits Denied? We Can Help.  Call the Social Security Lawyers – 1-866-332-8377

Some lawmakers say the penalties under texting-while-driving laws aren’t harsh enough, and need to be changed. Penalties for drunk drivers who cause a fatality are much harsher — some states include a four-year minimum prison sentence and a permanent driver’s license suspension.

Awareness of the dangers of texting-while-driving seem to be climbing, yet full appreciation of the problem has a long way to go. While most drivers see the moral hazard of driving while intoxicated, too few still think that checking email or answering a text while operating a motor vehicle falls into the same category.

Forty-one-year old Jerry Joseph pleaded guilty in April to a moving violation causing the death last November of 78-year-old Irene Paquin of Attica Township, Mich. Paquin, a grandmother, was the passenger in the car driven by her 81-year-old husband Paul. The Paquins were broadsided by Joseph’s car.

Phone records obtained by the police revealed that Joseph was texting seconds before the impact.

Additional information – AOL.com

Starting Tuesday new rules go into effect covering everything from building design to what qualifies as a service animal.

Notably, the new ADA regulations will include first-ever accessibility requirements for swimming pools, parks, golf courses, boating facilities, exercise clubs and other recreational facilities.

What’s more, going forward, only trained dogs will be eligible for use as service animals.

While service dogs can provide a wide range of assistance for people with mental or physical disabilities, they must help with issues directly related to the person’s disability and offer more than “emotional support” under the new rules.

The revised regulations also set standards for the use of wheelchairs versus other mobility devices like Segways and provide guidance on selling tickets for accessible seating at entertainment venues and reserving hotel rooms.

“The new rules usher in a new day for the more than 50 million individuals with disabilities in this country,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights. “The rules will expand accessibility in a number of areas.”

While the regulations take effect Tuesday, businesses get some leeway. Only buildings constructed or altered after March 15, 2012 will have to comply with the new accessibility requirements.

Disability Scoop

Social Security Disability Information Guide

We provide basic information on Social Security disability benefits and these articles are not intended to answer all questions. For specific information about your situation, you should talk with one of our Social Security representatives.

“I just felt more overwhelmed,” said Young of Redford Township. After Young hired an attorney, her claim was approved in January — just before the savings she and her husband were living off of ran out. “That’s extremely scary, and when you’re stressed out, the MS flares up like a monster,” she said. “It came when I needed it, finally.”

She is among about 40,000 Michiganders waiting for Social Security to decide their pleas for disability benefits, a backlog among the nation’s worst because of the state’s lingering economic problems.

The Social Security Administration told Congress last month that it may use Michigan for an experiment to cut the wait. That worries some lawyers for those waiting on claims. “It’s going to make a bad situation worse,” said Cliff Weisberg, a Southfield attorney whose firm handles about 2,000 cases a year. “What good is it … if by the time you get to a hearing, the client is dead?”

Agency could have local offices reconsider the rejected claims. When Lindsay Cronin turned 18, her dad, Larry Cronin, sought Social Security disability benefits for her so that the mental disabilities she was born with would not leave her destitute when her parents could no longer give her care. Nearly three years later, the Cronins got an answer. After initially rejecting the request — and ruling that Lindsay was capable of doing jobs such as cleaning offices — Social Security granted the Cronins’ appeal in January.

“All of her peers were getting this, and we weren’t. It was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ” Larry Cronin said.

AARP

The Social Security system is so overwhelmed by applications for disability benefits that many people are waiting more than two years for their first payment. In Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and other states, the wait can be even longer.

The Social Security commissioner, Michael J. Astrue, says the delays are unacceptable, particularly for people who have paid payroll taxes for years to support the system and now are unable to work because of debilitating medical problems. Astrue has had some success in reducing a case backlog that has plagued the system for years. But a spike in new applications, linked to the economic recession, threatens to swamp the system again.

Claims typically increase in a bad economy because many people who worked despite their disabilities get laid off and apply for benefits.

About 3.3 million people are expected to apply for benefits this year. That’s 300,000 more than last year and 700,000 more than in 2008.

Nearly two-thirds of those claims will be denied by state agencies overseen by the Social Security Administration. Most of these people will drop their claims. But for those willing go through an appeals process that can take two years or more, chances are good they eventually will get benefits.

People who win claims can get retroactive benefits.