One should always be careful about the kind of information that you choose to put online. This seems to be especially true if you happen to be getting disability insurance benefits. People who are going through a divorce, or who have gotten a settlement from a divorce, should also be cautious about how much they say online. A woman lost her disability insurance benefits after blogging about her belly dancing activities.
The federal government has a program that provides financial assistance to people who have become disabled to the point where they can no longer work. A person either gets Social Security benefits, or gets Supplemental Security Income disability benefits. In addition to this, there may be individual state programs that do the same kind of thing. In general, the government organization will investigate a person’s medical history, as well as their work history, and will make a decision about if the person should, or should not, be receiving supplemental income from the disability benefit program.
Brian McGurk and his wife Dorothy McGurk, from New York, got divorced, several years ago. At the time of the divorce, Dorothy McGurk claimed that she was disabled, and completely unable to work. She said that it was a car accident that happened in 1997 that left her disabled. Perhaps it was due to her claim about being disabled that the court awarded her $850.00 a month from her now ex-husband’s salary. In addition to the $850.00 in alimony, she was also awarded the home that the two were living in before getting divorced.
Now, I’ve read quite a few articles about this situation, but I haven’t found anything that specifically states if Dorothy McGurk was getting disability insurance benefits from the state or federal government, or if the disability benefits came entirely from the divorce. Perhaps she was getting both? In any case, once a person receives disability insurance benefits, there is the possibility that they could lose those benefits. Usually, this would happen if someone made false claims about being disabled, or to the degree that they were disabled.
It seems that sometime after the divorce, Dorothy McGurk took up belly dancing. She wrote in her blog about belly dancing, vigorously, for several hours every day. One source I read says that she stated in her blog that she was belly dancing as a way of keeping fit. Another article said that Dorothy McGurk was dancing as a form of therapy for her injuries from the car accident. In any case, one would think that if a person was too disabled to work, then that person would also be too disabled to belly dance for hours every day.
When her ex-husband, Brian McGurk, learned of this, he went back to court. Dorothy McGurk claimed that a doctor prescribed belly dancing, but the doctor contradicted that statement. As a result, the court reduced Dorothy McGurk’s alimony to $400.00 a month, (or less than half of what she was getting). The $400.00 a month would last two years. She has also been ordered to pay for her ex-husbands attorney’s fees (which are $5,000.00). The family home will be sold, and 60% of the money will go to Brian McGurk.
Image by Frank Kovalchek on Flickr