🧭 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.
Every figure here is in today's dollars, and there's deliberately no switch to future dollars. This benefit can run 50+ years, and at that distance a nominal figure is noise — the same amount would read three or four times larger without buying anything more. Everything on this page is an is-this-enough comparison (benefit against need, against SSI, against what a trust must cover), and those only hold together in one consistent set of dollars. Social Security raises the actual payment by a cost-of-living adjustment each year, so the real check grows to keep pace.

📂 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.
Which number is this? Social Security calls it your primary insurance amount — the benefit at your full retirement age, on your ssa.gov statement as the age-67 figure. Two easy mix-ups, and both make everything below wrong:
Not your age-70 figure. That includes delayed retirement credits, which never pass to a child. It's roughly 24% larger.
Today's dollars, not future dollars. If you're comparing against fedretirecalc or myretirecalc, set “Show dollars as” to today's dollars there and read the “Claim FRA” box — that is exactly this number. Their headline figure is your claim-age benefit, which is a different thing.

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.