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Woman in a wheelchair saying: “THERE IS NO MARRIAGE EQUALITY UNTIL PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES CAN MARRY WITHOUT LOSING BENEFITS”
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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Chronic Illness
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Wait, they can't?
Where?
It's the US, isn't it? This is one of those US things where they don't feel the need to specify it's a US thing.
It’s the case in UK, Ireland, Belgium, Australia, Canada, the US, Italy, Greece etc.
Probably others, but those are the ones I know of.
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean you lose all your money if you marry, but your insurance income usually goes down quite harshly.
Specifically "disability" benefits or just overall social security transfers?
Bcs that might be due to the total household income too (and the fact that unfortunately a lot of ppl with disabilities & chronic pain don't have a lot of income).
(Overall we tend to be overly strict about such stuff bcs politicians often exploit it in a manner 'why should we pay for a millionaires basic wheelchair?!??' ... but I didn't know there was like a cut-off income point for overall benefits in terms of using them for specific medical things in Italy & Belgium, iirc that's not the case for glasses & basic dental care, tho the availability of the later in Italy is poor/really basic afaik.)
Well it’s the welfare people with disabilities (who cannot work due to their disability) are eligeable for. The system is different in every country but usually you have a base rate that is not enough to survive on (in the US it tends to be 8k per year, other countries aren’t much more generous), and hopefully you also qualify for other help, like maybe food stamps or subsidised energy payments.
In most of the countries I listed, both of those are slashed down or straight up removed if you marry someone with income, but especially the second. Which basically removes any freedom for the disabled person in the relationship and makes it way easier for abusive relationships to happen.
Because you end up having a huge power imbalance. You cannot fight for yourself, you rely on your partner for your daily care or for transport if you need to go anywhere. You also rely on them for money etc. The relationship can end up as heirarchical as a Parent/Child relationship. So it’s really a problem that if you choose to marry you lose all your independence.
I'm in Australia and get US$21.1k. Completely untaxed, and I can work up to ~15 hours before it affects my payment.
Yeah, I understood that (tho even that in case of divorce the disabled person would get benefits back which would empower them to seek divorce from a toxic relationship). Still inequity tho.
I was unaware of such radical transfer cuts in Europe, but I guess Italy is stagnant for decades now & it shows on social structures.
Just checked, for civil invalidity the income threshold is 17k€ net, but no income tax applies - which is disgustingly low, especially in northern Italy - but I think that might be "just" to qualify for an annuity, it doesnt cancel other disability-specific benefits, such as wheelchairs or co-financing one if the person wants a better model ... not that that is much, but medicine/medical accessories/care is ofc included which is at least better than overseas.
I'm not sure but there might be some other forms of help disabled persons can take advantage of (I'm guessing, but eg like untaxed artisan work or companies getting perpetually reimbursed if they hire disabled employees).
I don't know much about Greece but not having a big social safety net is def surprising for a country with a lot of social transfers.
I guess EU should do better on the anti-wealth concentration front, it's gotten dystopian.
My wife gets about $20,000/year in disability payments (US).
I have no idea how it's calculated. I'm assuming it would be much more if she wasn't married to me.
If it's ssdi I know it's calculated by the average yearly income prior to disability. I made ~$28k/year before applying for ssdi 10 years ago, and I get about half that from ssdi now (after col raises)
Yeah. My wife had her own optometry practice. Unfortunately her income was not what most of her patients and employees thought it was. In her last full year of working full time her total salary for the year was $6000.
That's messed up. Place I am you actually get extra benefits if you have a disabled person as a dependent.
Or you're supposed to, anyway, the paperwork sucks and there is a lot of malicious compliance from conservative authorities involved, but still.
There may be some areas where aid is tallied based on family income, but I don't know of any off the top of my head. That's more of a school grant thing, if anything.
It was the case in France a well until 2023
From the U.S. here, and the image is correct. My fiancé has chronic disabilities, with essentially no chance for recovery.
I'm employed as her caretaker, and I make about $30k/year doing so. She is on SNAP (food assistance), medicaid (government paid healthcare), and SSI (monthly payments to her bank account).
If we get married, it'll mean a massive cost for us, since very little of these benefits would carry over afterwards. I legally cannot be her caretaker if we're married, and my main job would put us in too high of a tax bracket for the rest of her benefits to go untouched.
It's a shockingly bad system.
I live in the US and had no idea this is how it worked. I shouldn’t be surprised-this place is a hellhole if you’re poor. Why would being disabled be any different?
Maybe some awareness is needed here. It might do nothing - but it for sure ain’t changing if people don’t know this goes on.
Oh man, it's complicated, John Oliver had a whole bit on it.
Basically if you're disabled and on federal assistance, you have to stay below a certain income level.
If you get married, that double income puts you over the limit and you lose your assistance. It's deeply fucked up.
24 minutes, NSFW:
https://youtu.be/hq2s7RMRsgs
Marriage bit is around the 20 minute mark, but really, everyone should watch the whole thing.
That's extremely dumb. The obvious way to measure income limits is income per capita. Also, being officially married shouldn't make a difference.
Whatever, I'm deliberately trying to block US discourse. Best of luck to anybody dealing with it, but I'm actively trying to make my Internet be as little about the US as possible, so I'm walking away now.
As a mod of !world@lemmy.world, I feel your pain. US News creeps into there continually. We remove it when we see it.
Even then it's still just mostly:
Ukraine
Ukraine
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Ukraine ...
Have you considered that might perhaps be because of the terrible moderation policies driving people away?
Nope, traffic is good, it's mostly just everyone wants to fixate on Israel and Ukraine.
I literally saw you arguing something was a call to violence in YPTB today, when it was just someone having an opinion on current events. People already left a long while back, and I'm willing to bet traffic isn't increasing as much as it is on more diverse comms. I abandoned it for reading news from various sources on country-specific instances.
LOL - Saying we need blood right now to water the tree of liberty IS a call to violence. If you disagree, that's fine, we don't need that polluting our communities.
k bro, and THIS is why no one posts more diverse content in your communities 👏 because fascists being violent is fine but when people suggest violence back you throw hissy fits like this one
edit: and despite that, they weren't even suggesting it. they made an observation, not an incitement
It's not a "hissy fit" when it's actively against the rules of the community and lemmy.world terms of service:
https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
It's US here, but even more specifically, an 'adult disabled since childhood' can not get married to anyone but another 'adult disabled since childhood' or all the benefits are removed. Entirely.
Which sucks cause guess what classification my husband with cerebral palsy has?? Oh well, eternal fiance for me I guess. Fiancee? One of them.
Not just the US, but yeah, definitely here.
And inevitably someone from that country, already fucked by said system, will pop-up & defend it how much sense it makes (so let's not bash it too much).
:(
If you see something dystopian, its from the us 🤷♀️