Harper-Lee v. Astrue
| Decision Date | 12 April 2012 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 2:11-cv-571 |
| Parties | Catherine Harper-Lee, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Ohio |
Plaintiffs Miah and Calista Harper, through their mother, plaintiff Catherine Harper-Lee, filed this action seeking review of decisions of the Commissioner of Social Security denying their applications for survivor benefits payable upon the death of their stepfather, Michael Lee, from whom their mother was separated at the time of his death. Mr. Lee died on March 13, 2006, and the claims at issue in this case were filed approximately two months later.
After initial administrative denials of these claims, a hearing was held before an Administrative Law Judge on March 20, 2009. In two separate decisions dated July 16, 2009, the ALJ denied the claims. Those became the Commissioner's final decision on April 28, 2011, when the Appeals Council denied review.
After plaintiffs filed this case, the Commissioner filed the administrative record on September 20, 2011. Plaintiffs filed a statement of specific errors on November 7, 2011, and the Commissioner filed a response on December 12, 2011. Plaintiffs filed a reply brief on December 14, 2011, and the case is now ready to decide.
It is helpful, before reviewing the evidence in this case and the basis of the ALJ's decision, to set out briefly the law which applies to survivors' benefits claims, and particularly what must be established in order for a step-child to collect survivors' benefits.
The statutory authority for the payment of benefits to the surviving children of an insured wage-earner is found in 42 U.S.C. §402(d). That statute provides that every child of a deceased wage earner, provided that the child is not married and is either under 18, or, if a full-time elementary or secondary school student, under 19, may obtain benefits if the child was dependent on the wage-earner. This statutory subsection also allows a step-child to obtain benefits if, at the time the stepparent dies, the step-child was receiving at least one-half of his or her support from the step-parent. 42 U.S.C. §402(d)(4). There are additional regulatory requirements that must be met, such as the requirement that the child's biological parent must have been married to the deceased step-parent for at least nine months, but those requirements are not at issue here. Rather, the sole issue in this case is whether, at the time Mr. Lee died, he was providing more than one-half of the support received by his step-daughters. With that background in mind, the Court now turns to the evidence which was presented to the ALJ, both in the form of documents and in the form of testimony.
There is not a great deal of documentary evidence in the record which relates to the issue of parental support. There is a chart of checks written by Mr. Lee to Ms. Harper-Lee (Tr. 40) purporting to show that, over the time period from February 6, 2005 to February 4, 2006, he paid her an average of $1,940.58 per month. The checks themselves are also a part of the record.(Tr. 41-68). One additional check for $700.00, written on February 16, 2006, is found at Tr. 68. That check is not on the list found at Tr. 40. Most of the checks do not indicate the purpose for which they were written.
Mr. Lee's W-2 forms for 2005 are in the record as well, and they show that his gross income for that year was $89,622.47. (Tr. 69). That same year, Ms. Harper-Lee earned $54,999.98. (Tr. 70). There is also a support compensation worksheet from the Franklin County Domestic Relations Court showing their income; the figures are slightly but not materially different. (Tr. 117-20). The worksheet calculates an amount each parent was to contribute to the children's support, which is done according to the ratio each parent's income bears to the total family income, and it shows that Mr. Lee's percentage of support was to be 61%, and Ms. Harper-Lee's 39%. Additionally, the parties entered into a separation agreement in that court, pursuant to which no spousal support was to be paid. That agreement set the amount of monthly child support to be paid by Mr. Lee at $1,000.78 and also required him to maintain health and life insurance for them. (Tr. 121-32). It was signed in January, 2006, but had not been approved by the court at the time of Mr. Lee's death.
Also in the file is a letter from Mr. Lee's employer setting out the rates for medical, dental and vision insurance. It shows that the difference between the insurance for an individual employee, and for an employee and family members, was between roughly $320.00 and $335.00 per month, depending on the time frame. (Tr. 137).
Ms. Harper-Lee was the only witness at the administrative hearing. She testified as follows.
Ms. Harper-Lee married Mr. Lee in 1998. Initially, althoughboth spouses worked, they handled their finances jointly. That changed in 2002 when they first separated. They reunited in June, 2003, but separated again in 2004. From that time until Mr. Lee's death, they did not live as part of the same household.
Ms. Harper-Lee testified about the checks listed at Tr. 40. She said that they were written primarily to help out with expenses for the children. Some of the money went to maintain a life insurance policy on Mr. Lee's life for the benefit of Ms. Harper-Lee, her two daughters, and three children of Mr. Lee's from a previous marriage. Some of it went to a debt owed to a law firm. Ms. Harper-Lee also stated that the family health insurance coverage which Mr. Lee obtained through his job was not only for her two children's benefit, but also covered her and one of Mr. Lee's other children. She testified that she had no other documentation of money that he gave her for the children's benefit, but that he did spend additional money on activities for them.
Finally, Ms. Harper-Lee testified that despite the separation, Mr. Lee spent a good deal of time at her home and with the children. She believed it was his hope that the family would ultimately be reunited.
The Administrative Law Judge's decisions (there are two claimants, so there are two decisions, which are for all relevant purposes identical) appear at pages 23 through 30 and pages 187 through 194 of the administrative record. The following is a fair summary of what the ALJ decided.
The key finding made by the ALJ was, of course, her determination that neither of the children received at least half of her support from Mr. Lee in the twelve months immediately preceding his death. The ALJ stated that there are two different methods under which such a determination is to be made: the"pooled fund" method, applicable when the parents live together and pool their income, or when they are only separated on a temporary basis; and the contribution method, which looks at the amount which each parent actually pays toward the support of the children. She found the first method inapplicable because, after the 2004 separation, Mr. Lee and Ms. Harper-Lee did not pool their resources, did not live together, and had no definite plans to reunite. Specifically, the ALJ cited the length of the separation, the lack of any definite ending date for the separation, the fact that Ms. Harper-Lee would not consider reuniting Mr. Lee with the family unless he sought treatment for a substance abuse disorder (which he did not do), and the filing of the separation agreement, as factors showing their separation was not of a temporary nature.
As far as the contribution method is concerned, the ALJ noted that the state agency had determined, using a method which took into account the money actually paid by Mr. Lee on behalf of the children, and which assumed that two-thirds of the money earned by Ms. Harper-Lee was for their benefit, that Ms. Harper-Lee's contribution was $18,333.33 per child for the twelve-month period at issue, and that Mr. Lee's was only $10,893.50. Based on the testimony at the administrative hearing, the ALJ found that Mr. Lee's contributions were actually a bit less ($10,493.50 per child), and even if Ms. Harper-Lee's share of the children's support were calculated on the basis of her net, rather than gross, annual income, her share was still some $14,131.66 - again more than half of the support they received. For these reasons, the ALJ determined that the children were not entitled to benefits on Mr. Lee's social security account.
Plaintiffs' statement of errors raises the following issue. Noting that the applicable regulation, 20 C.F.R. §404.366(b),states that the amount of the deceased parent's contributions for support must equal or exceed "one-half of your ordinary living costs," plaintiffs argue that the ALJ should first have determined the children's "ordinary living costs" before deciding if Mr. Lee's contributions equaled or exceeded one-half of that amount. Because the ALJ simply assumed that those costs could be derived by adding Mr. Lee's contribution to one-third of Ms. Harper-Lee's income, without ever attempting to determine whether the resulting figure represented the children's ordinary living costs, plaintiffs claim that the method used by the ALJ does not comport with the regulation. Plaintiffs also claim that the ALJ improperly disregarded uncontradicted evidence that Mr. Lee provided additional support beyond that which for which some document could be produced, noting that the regulations do not require strict documentary proof on this issue. The Court generally reviews the decision of an ALJ in a social security case under this legal standard:
Standard of Review. Under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. Section...
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