§404.2011. What happens to your monthly benefits while we are finding a suitable representative payee for you? — Inbound Citations

Anytime after we select a representative payee for you, we may ask your payee to give us information showing a continuing relationship with you, a continuing responsibility for your care, and how he/she used the payments on your behalf. If your representative payee does not give us the requested information within a reasonable period of time, we may stop sending your benefit payment to him/her—unless we determine that he/she had a satisfactory reason for not meeting our request and we subsequently receive the requested information. If we decide to stop sending your payment to your representative payee, we will consider paying you directly (in accordance with § 404.2011) while we look for a new payee.

For an explanation of the policy we use to determine what happens to your monthly benefits while we are finding a suitable representative payee for you, see § 404.2011 of this chapter.

When we learn that your interest is not served by sending your benefit payment to your present representative payee or that your present payee is no longer able or willing to carry out payee responsibilities, we will promptly stop sending your payment to the payee. We will then send your benefit payment to an alternative payee or directly to you, until we find a suitable payee. We may suspend payment as explained in § 404.2011(c) if we find that paying you directly would cause substantial harm and we cannot find a suitable alternative representative payee before your next payment is due. We will terminate payment of benefits to your representative payee and find a new payee or pay you directly if the present payee: