My son used to lose his wallet frequently. I paid for a credit monitor for a couple of years after the last time. I had heard that sometime they don’t use the information right away.
Now that you have your son’s benefits started, have you considered making sure your and your husband’s wills won’t impact him? Example: In our state, if my husband, myself and our other child, were to die in a car accident together, without a will, Jeb would inherit assets. Inheriting those assets would immediately make him ineligible for benefits until those assets were all spent. Once spent he would have to reapply for benefits all by himself.
It would probably go like this: We all die, Jeb is on his own. He just stays where he is, benefits cease, he goes through everything in like, maybe, 2 years IF he doesn’t like shopping, which he does, so figure a new car, and the possibility for huge lawyer fees if someone just sees Jeb as an easy target and offers to “help” him. He has to pay cash for his expensive meds. Eventually doesn’t even have money for property taxes and gets evicted for sheriff’s sale.
In a very short time, he is homeless, probably shows up at lawyers office to angrily ask what happened and gets arrested.
I try to think of things as “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”. There are ways to set money in a trust so that it won’t affect his benefits. Money can still be available for medical needs and other uses.
You might have more options where you reside. Here, it was a struggle just to find an attorney who had even heard of a special needs trust, its more of a speciality field. There are some places where parents have formed organizations to oversee the care for each other’s adult children, you leave your assets to the organization.
My SIL has an autistic adult son, once his ssi was established, the SS worker told her to get their wills done immediately.
We have to do the best we can to structure something for their future in the event they outlive us.