🧭 Disabled Adult Child Benefit Calculator

If your child's disability began before age 22, Social Security can pay them on your earnings record — for life, long after you're gone. This works out what they'd get, when it starts, and the steps that have to happen for it to work. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

📂 Start from a file you already have optional

If you've used fedretirecalc, myretirecalc or the household estimator, load the file you downloaded there and this fills in your full retirement amount, birth year, claim age and any children you already entered. Nothing is uploaded — the file is read in your browser.

1 · You the parent whose record pays

Use the higher-earning parent — the benefit is a percentage of their full retirement amount.
Your full retirement amount (Social Security calls it the primary insurance amount) is on your ssa.gov statement as the benefit at age 67. Use that figure, not your age-70 figure — see the note below about delayed credits.

2 · Your child

What this does not do

This models the Social Security side, which is the part with clear published rules. It deliberately stops short of three things that need a professional who can see your whole picture:
Your state's Medicaid rules. The federal protection described below tells states to keep Medicaid going. States implement it differently, and a handful (called 209(b) states) apply their own stricter tests. Verify yours.
Trust mechanics. Whether a third-party special-needs trust, a first-party (d)(4)(A) trust, or a pooled trust fits — and how it's drafted — changes whether benefits survive. The gap figure below sizes the problem; it doesn't solve it.
Work income. Earnings above the substantial-gainful-activity line ($1,690/mo in 2026, $2,830 if blind) can end the benefit entirely. Work incentives exist and are worth real money, but they're case-by-case.
For ABLE accounts — contribution limits, the $100,000 SSI threshold, and state tax breaks — use myablecalc.com. For the household retirement picture that this benefit sits inside, use the household estimator.