Resigning does not automatically disqualify you from unemployment benefits. If you were told to "resign or be fired," pressured out by intolerable conditions, or asked to sign a resignation letter your employer drafted, most states treat the separation as a discharge or a quit with good cause — both of which can be paid. What […]
If someone filed an unemployment claim in your name, report it immediately to the state unemployment agency where the claim was filed, tell your employer, and file an identity theft report at IdentityTheft.gov. You are not liable for the benefits the impostor collected, and you should not pay tax on them — but you need […]
Most states require between one and five work search contacts per week to keep unemployment benefits, and three per week is the most common number. A "contact" generally means actually applying for a job, submitting a resume, or interviewing — not just browsing listings. Miss the requirement for a week, and that week’s payment can […]
If the IRS charged you a late-filing or late-payment penalty and you have a clean record for the prior three years, you can usually get it removed with one phone call. It is called first-time abate, and it is administrative — you do not have to prove a good excuse, only a clean history. Most […]
If you filed a joint return and your spouse or ex-spouse understated the tax, you can ask the IRS to release you from that debt. The request is Form 8857, and there are three different kinds of relief on the one form — innocent spouse relief, separation of liability, and equitable relief. Which one you […]
If Social Security says your Medicare premium is going up because of your income, and your income has since dropped because you retired, you can ask them to use your current income instead. The form is SSA-44, and it works — but only for a specific list of life-changing events. This is the single most […]
The Medicare Part B late enrollment penalty is 10% of the standard premium for each full 12-month period you could have had Part B and did not. It is added to your monthly premium and, in most cases, you pay it for as long as you have Part B. It is not a one-time fine. […]
An ABLE account lets a person with a disability save money without blowing past the $2,000 SSI resource limit. The first $100,000 in an ABLE account is excluded from SSI resources entirely, and the whole balance is excluded for Medicaid. The change that matters right now: starting with tax year 2026, eligibility opens to people […]
You can take a Social Security survivor benefit first and switch to your own retirement benefit later — or take your own first and switch to the survivor benefit. Survivor benefits are exempt from the deemed filing rules, which is what makes the two-step strategy possible for widows and widowers when it is not possible […]
Yes — there are two ways to undo a Social Security retirement claim, and they work very differently. Within 12 months of your first payment, you can withdraw the application entirely using Form SSA-521. You repay every dollar paid on your record and it is as if you never filed. You get one of these […]