Social Security Tries to Claw Back Benefits from Homeschooling Family

When the Social Security Administration sent a bill for $12,000 to Nancy Haskins-LeBlanc's husband, she knew her family faced a legal challenge they would not be able to resolve on their own.

As Nancy understood the law, because her 18-year-old daughter had not yet graduated from their homeschool, the government agency actually still owed her family money. Proving this fact to a massive federal bureaucracy was another matter.

So Nancy turned to HSLDA. Our legal team put their extensive experience in this niche area to work for the family and—after a seven-year struggle—attained a positive result.

“We’re happy to operate in this area of the law because it’s a way to help the homeschool movement,” explained Peter Kamakawiwoole, HSLDA director of litigation. “We’ve developed quite a bit of knowledge about how to address these kinds of cases—what documents to assemble, and what officials to approach. And very often we’re aiding families who receive these benefits because they are facing hardship.”

Homeschooling called into question

HSLDA is currently working on about 65 cases in 23 states involving families attempting to collect their rightful benefits, including payments from Social Security, Veterans Affairs, and court-ordered child support. The conflict typically centers on parents proving that children who have turned 18 are still actively being homeschooled, and thus continue to qualify for benefits intended for students.

The case involving Nancy’s daughter varied a little from the norm. When Nancy’s husband turned 65, even though he was not drawing on his Social Security retirement at the time, he qualified for supplemental payments because their daughter was still in high school.

As Nancy recalled, when she first spoke to an official at the Social Security office to apply for benefits, the official replied that the family did not qualify because they were homeschooling. A supervisor later clarified that homeschooling does indeed count.

When their daughter turned 18 in 2016, Nancy filed the necessary paperwork to extend the payments until the teen graduated. And the payments did keep coming, at least until May 2017, when Social Security officials sent a letter stating they had made a mistake. Not only did they cut off any future benefits; they also told the family to pay back what they’d received in the previous 12 months.

“It was very annoying,” Nancy recalled. “They just didn’t appreciate that our daughter was being homeschooled.”

Officials failed to provide specifics describing why the benefits had been canceled or how to reinstate them, multiplying the family’s frustration.

“They rarely explain themselves,” said Beth Taber, an HSLDA litigation assistant who has worked on scores of Social Security cases. She added that in these instances Social Security typically communicates through form letters, which usually state a student is disqualified for further benefits because they are not disabled or not a student.

“For the families we represent, most of the time these claims simply aren’t accurate,” Taber noted. “That’s where the discrimination comes in.”

Cutting the red tape

HSLDA helped Nancy’s family with the next step in the process, filing a request for reconsideration with the local Social Security office in June 2017. The family heard nothing until March 2020, when officials sent another standard letter stating that the denial of benefits had been upheld.

Our legal team then helped submit a request for a hearing before an administrative law judge. Years passed before a hearing was scheduled. Kamakawiwoole said he suspects this unusual delay was due to officials catching up on a backlog of cases following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finally, a hearing was set for November 2024. Our legal team helped the family prepare by assembling documents that show they complied with Massachusetts homeschool law. These included approval letters from the local public school superintendent, copies of their homeschool plans, and transcripts.

HSLDA also urged the family to submit attendance logs.

“We do this because Social Security has its own standard for what constitutes full-time attendance,” Taber explained. “The federal standard may be different than what the state requires and, depending on which standard is higher (state or federal), this will change the expectation Social Security has for hours and days of attendance.”

In response to this guidance, Nancy created a spreadsheet to account for every day her daughter was in school, every course she took, and the number of hours of homework she did. This included tracking time spent in an internship, community college courses, summer industrial design classes, being tutored in math, and independent studies in the Polish language.

The check is in the mail

A month after the hearing, Social Security announced it was reinstating benefits. In October 2025, the family received a check covering the few remaining months for which they had not received payments.

After graduating in 2017, Nancy’s daughter studied industrial design at a college in Canada. She now helps build robots for a manufacturing company.

Nancy added that even though her daughter is advancing in a career, she’s happy to be able to hand over a little extra money. At the hearing, Nancy noted, she was so apprehensive about whether or not she and her husband would have to pay back thousands of dollars she couldn’t bring herself to mention the leftover amount they hadn’t received.

“I didn’t have the courage to ask for the last four months of benefits—but Peter did,” Nancy recalled. “And it’s a good thing. It’s a nice windfall for my daughter.”