Social Security Fairness Act: Impact on Wyoming DAC Benefits

What the Law Changed

The Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), signed into law on January 5, 2025, repealed two provisions that had reduced Social Security benefits for millions of public-sector workers and their families for decades: the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO).

Both provisions are now eliminated for all benefits payable after December 2023. The SSA issued retroactive adjustments back to January 2024, with payments beginning in February 2025; implementation is complete.

Why This Matters for Wyoming Families

Wyoming has a large public-sector workforce. Teachers, firefighters, state employees, and law enforcement officers who worked for the Wyoming Retirement System or other non-covered pension systems — meaning Social Security taxes were not withheld from their wages — were directly affected by WEP and GPO.

The impact hit their adult children with disabilities especially hard. Under the old rules:

• WEP reduced a retired or disabled parent's own Social Security benefit. Since Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefits are calculated as a percentage of the parent's Primary Insurance Amount (PIA), a reduced PIA meant a reduced DAC payment.
• GPO reduced or eliminated spousal and survivor Social Security benefits for anyone receiving a non-covered government pension. If a surviving parent receiving a state pension tried to claim Social Security on a deceased spouse's record, GPO could wipe out the benefit entirely — and with it, the DAC benefit their disabled adult child would have received on that record.

What Families Should Do Now

If a parent retired from a Wyoming government position with a non-covered pension, their adult child with a disability may be entitled to a larger DAC benefit than SSA is currently paying — or may now qualify for a DAC benefit that was previously denied outright.

Three actions families should take:

Check current DAC payments. If the adult child already receives DAC benefits that were reduced under WEP or GPO, contact SSA to verify that the repeal adjustment and retroactive payment back to January 2024 were applied.

File a new claim if previously denied. If the family never applied for DAC benefits because WEP or GPO would have zeroed them out, a new application is required. The repeal is not applied automatically to people who never filed. The adult child must meet the standard DAC eligibility requirements: disabled before age 22, and the parent must be retired, disabled, or deceased with sufficient FICA-covered work history.

Plan for the SSI interaction. A newly unreduced DAC benefit may push the adult child's income above the SSI threshold. DAC is unearned income. After the $20 general exclusion, it reduces SSI dollar-for-dollar. If the DAC benefit is $1,014 or more (the 2026 FBR of $994 plus the $20 exclusion), SSI drops to zero.

This is not a disaster — the Pickle Amendment protects Medicaid when a former SSI recipient would still qualify for SSI but for Title II cost-of-living increases. Families need to confirm whether that protection applies, plan for the loss of the SSI cash benefit, and understand that the state Optional State Supplement will also disappear once SSI is no longer the sole income source.

The Net Financial Effect

For most families, the repeal is a significant net gain. A DAC benefit based on a parent's full, unreduced PIA is almost always larger than the SSI payment it replaces. The tradeoff is administrative complexity: SSI was simple (one check, one set of rules), while DAC plus Pickle Amendment Medicaid plus possible EID enrollment involves multiple programs that must be coordinated to avoid coverage gaps.

The Wyoming SSI at 18 & Adult Disability Benefits Guide covers the full DAC-to-SSI interaction math, including how to calculate whether the adult child's net income increases or decreases after the transition, and the timeline for notifying the county BES to maintain Medicaid continuity.

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