Couple Walks Down Aisle and Into Quagmire

Albert Quintanar and Bernadette Robinson met in high school, began dating in college and culminated their relationship with a large wedding at a Catholic church last September.

The Quintanars are typical of many young couples, except that both are disabled. Albert has had cerebral palsy since birth. Bernadette has polio and is confined to a wheelchair. Their first months of married life have been filled with frustrations unimaginable to most other couples.

The problem is not their disabilities, but the federal regulations over the disability benefits on which they depend. Shortly after they returned from their honeymoon, the Quintanars learned that their marriage had cost Albert his eligibility for Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare.

“Someone said it was a wedding present from (the government),” said Bernadette, 29, sitting in the couple’s federally subsidized apartment in Claremont. “We’re angry, very angry. (We feel) kind of a disbelief that they would do that just because we exchanged marriage vows.”

Benefits Forfeited

Government regulations stipulate that recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance forfeit most of their benefits when they marry, presumably because they have someone to provide for them. The only exception is for marriages between disability insurance recipients.

Under the complicated formulas that determine eligibility for disability insurance, Albert qualified but Bernadette did not. Therefore, under this program’s regulations, Bernadette was not considered to be disabled, even though she requires a full-time assistant and depends on Supplemental Social Security Income. Social Security law makes no allowances for marriages between recipients of the two programs.

“You’re dealing with two offices within the same agency that have conflicts with each other in so many ways,” said Albert, 28. “One is considered insurance and the other is considered welfare. That is the glitch in the law.”

That “glitch” caused the couple’s combined monthly income of $1,170 to be reduced by $104.

“When you’re already living below the poverty level and you lose 10% of your income, it’s very hard,” Albert said. “We’ve managed to make ends meet, but just barely. . . . But the damage really came when they took away our Medicare.”

The loss of medical coverage for the medication Albert requires was more than the couple could accept. They decided to fight back. The two started with local case workers, but their hands were tied by the regulations.

“They told us the only way we could retain (the benefits) was to get an annulment,” Bernadette said. “It’s unbelievable to penalize the marriage.”

Efforts Pay Off

Over the next seven months, the Quintanars met with advocates for the disabled, sought legal counsel and wrote letters to their congressional representatives. Recently those efforts began to pay off.

Pasadena attorney Bertram Potter agreed to represent them free of charge and filed for an expedited hearing on the couple’s benefits. Potter contends the Quintanars’ constitutional rights to due process and equal protection under the law have been violated.

“I think this is clearly a mistake in the regulations,” Potter said, though he acknowledged it may take up to a year for the couple’s appeal to be heard. “It’s so damned unfair.”

After learning of the Quintanars’ plight, Rep. David Dreier (R-Covina) introduced a bill to amend the Social Security Act to preserve disability benefits for beneficiaries who marry recipients of Supplemental Security Income.

“Let us stop discouraging marriage,” Dreier told his fellow members of Congress in introducing HR 2080, which is being considered by the House Ways and Means Committee.

‘An Oversight’

Dreier said he believes the regulation that penalized the Quintanars for marrying is “an oversight” in the existing regulation.

“My first reaction was ‘Wow, how can this exist?’ It was unbelievable,” Dreier said by telephone from his Capitol office. He added that he expects Congress to pass the bill later this session. “Sept. 3 is their first anniversary. It would be nice if we could make it by then.”

The Quintanars said they were surprised by the response to their pleas. “With all the bureaucracy, the individual sort of feels small,” Bernadette said. “It’s encouraging to know people are listening.”

Dreier’s bill is one of two key pieces of legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill that the Quintanars hope will remove some of the legal obstacles preventing disabled people from leading otherwise normal lives.

Neither Had Worked

The other bill, HR 8, would enable recipients of disability insurance to work without losing their Medicare coverage. Although both Albert and Bernadette Quintanar have college degrees, neither of them worked until recently because they could not afford to lose their federal benefits.

Albert recently went to work as a counselor with the state Department of Rehabilitation in Van Nuys. Bernadette said she would also like to pursue a career, but the two worry that, under current Social Security policies, they might be worse off financially if they both worked.

Albert noted that the treatment of America’s disabled has improved dramatically from the early days of this century when the handicapped were routinely institutionalized. But, despite the advances made in civil rights and educational opportunity, he said the laws governing Social Security benefits keep many disabled Americans from entering the mainstream.

“They’ve been a disincentive for me or anybody else with a disability to work,” he said, adding that the disabled receive a mixed message from society. “We’re told to get an education to better our lives and enhance our personal growth, but you better not get a job because (our benefits) will be cut back tremendously. It’s a double standard we have to live with.”

The Quintanars said they are optimistic that changes in the law will resolve the dilemma facing the disabled. They hope that soon the handicapped will be able to marry, work and live independently, without losing the medical coverage they need for their physical impairments.

“Society as a whole feels a need to take care of us,” Albert said. “What we’re saying is we want to take care of ourselves. The biggest (obstacles) are the lack of education of the general public and the stereotypes about the disabled that need to be broken. We can work, we can marry, we can lead normal lives.”