SSI's marriage penalty reduces combined benefits by 25% when two disabled recipients marry, forcing couples to choose between marriage and financial survival

When two SSI recipients marry, their combined maximum benefit drops from $1,988/month ($994 each) to $1,491/month -- a 25% reduction of $497/month simply for being legally married. Additionally, the couple's combined asset limit drops from $4,000 ($2,000 each) to $3,000. If an SSI recipient marries a non-recipient, the spouse's income and assets are 'deemed' to the recipient, potentially eliminating benefits entirely. Why it matters: disabled individuals must choose between the legal protections of marriage and keeping their benefits, so couples cohabitate without legal rights to make medical decisions, inherit property, or access spousal protections, so families with disabled members are structurally denied the same legal framework available to everyone else, so disabled people are treated as second-class citizens whose personal relationships are financially penalized, so the program violates the fundamental principle of equal treatment under law. The structural root cause is that SSI was designed in 1972 using the assumption that married couples have lower per-person living costs, but the 25% reduction far exceeds any actual economies of scale, and Congress has not passed the Eliminating the Marriage Penalty in SSI Act despite repeated bipartisan introduction.