If you found out a monthly check had been sitting unclaimed for two years — money your child legally qualified for — what would you do with the time you’d lost? That question stayed with me long after I left my conversation with Samantha Reeves.
I first connected with Samantha through a community Facebook group for Denver-area single parents. She’d posted a brief comment under a thread about Social Security child benefits — just four words: “Why didn’t I know.” I messaged her the next morning. She agreed to meet me on her lunch break at the hospital where she works as a registered nurse.
A Nurse Running on Empty
Samantha Reeves is 31 years old, sharp, and visibly tired in the way that people who never fully rest become tired. She pulled a granola bar from her scrubs pocket before she’d even sat down. She told me she hadn’t had a full lunch break since February.
She earns a solid nursing salary — in Colorado, RNs at community hospitals earn a median of roughly $76,000 annually according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — but Denver’s cost of living absorbs most of it. Her daycare bill runs $1,400 a month, nearly identical to her rent. Her student loans from nursing school sit at $38,000. And two years ago, her daughter’s father stopped responding to calls, messages, and eventually legal notices.
“I just assumed I was the plan,” she told me. “There was no backup. I picked up overtime, I cut everything I could cut, and I stopped asking for help because it felt like asking for something that didn’t exist.”
She was picking up two to three overtime shifts a week. She was also, she admitted, starting to worry about burnout in a profession where burnout can cost lives — hers or someone else’s.
The Phone Call That Changed the Calculation
The breakthrough didn’t come from a government agency or a financial counselor. It came from a coworker eating a sandwich in the break room.
When I spoke with Samantha about the moment, she laughed — a short, disbelieving laugh. A colleague mentioned offhand that her own nephew received a monthly Social Security check because his father had been approved for SSDI. Samantha had never made the connection. She knew Social Security existed. She knew it was for retirement and disability. She did not know that children of a parent receiving Social Security Disability Insurance could qualify for their own monthly benefit.
“I went home that night and looked it up at eleven o’clock after my daughter was asleep,” she told me. “And I just kept reading the same sentence over and over: ‘A child may receive up to 50 percent of the disabled worker’s full benefit amount.’ I didn’t sleep.”
The situation, as Samantha pieced it together: her ex had not simply vanished. He had, through a family contact she eventually tracked down, been approved for SSDI after a serious accident. He was receiving a monthly disability benefit — and that triggered a dependent benefit her daughter was legally entitled to, without any contribution or involvement required from him.
Filing the Application — What It Actually Looked Like
Samantha is practical by temperament. She didn’t spiral. She made a list.
She called her local Social Security Administration office, gathered her daughter’s birth certificate, her own identification, and documentation confirming the father’s SSDI status. She described the SSA phone wait time as “long enough that I meal-prepped while I was on hold.” The application itself took several weeks to process.
The SSA approved the application. Samantha’s daughter began receiving $764 per month — 50% of her father’s primary insurance amount based on his work record. She was designated as the representative payee, meaning the check comes directly to her to be used for her daughter’s care, housing, and basic needs.
What the 2025 COLA Meant for That Check
Samantha filed in mid-2024. By January 2025, the Social Security Administration applied the annual cost-of-living adjustment — 2.5% for 2025, as confirmed by SSA’s official COLA announcement. For her daughter’s benefit, that meant an increase of approximately $19 per month, bringing the total to roughly $783.
It’s a modest number in isolation. But Samantha explained it differently. “Nineteen dollars is a week of fruit and vegetables for us. It’s a co-pay. It adds up when you’re counting everything.”
She now times her largest recurring expenses — daycare and a car payment — to clear in the days immediately following the Wednesday deposit. It’s a small structural change, but for someone managing a budget this tight, timing matters.
The Part She Can’t Get Back
When I asked Samantha what she wanted other parents in her situation to hear, she paused longer than she had at any other point in our conversation.
“The two years I didn’t know — that’s real money that’s gone,” she said. “I’m not saying it would have fixed everything. But I would have slept more. I might not have picked up that third shift the week I was sick. I would have made different choices.”
She estimated the missed benefit at roughly $18,000 over those two years — money that went uncollected simply because she didn’t know to ask. SSA does not proactively notify dependent children that a parent’s SSDI approval may trigger their own eligibility. The burden is on the family to apply.
She still carries $38,000 in nursing school loans. She still pays $1,400 a month for daycare. But she has dropped back to one overtime shift a week, which she describes as the difference between sustainable and not. The $783 isn’t solving every problem. It’s buying her margin.
“I became a nurse because I wanted stability for my daughter,” she told me as she stood to head back to her unit. “I still want that. But I also want to still be her mother by the time she’s old enough to remember me clearly.”
I drove back from that hospital thinking about all the Samanthas who haven’t made the connection yet — who are picking up extra shifts and skipping lunches and not sleeping, unaware that a benefit with their child’s name on it is sitting unclaimed. The system won’t call them. It rarely does.
Related: The Social Security Breakeven Point Most People Miss Before They Claim Early
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