https://www.thenation.com/article/society/ssi-rules-families-poverty/
The Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) was created in 1972 under the Nixon administration to provide financial support to low-income seniors and disabled people. An effort to federalize state-level adult support programs across the country, SSI is a means-tested program—there are financial requirements to be eligible. In the case of SSI, as of its last adjustment in 1989, enrollees cannot have savings of more than $2,000 as an individual or $3,000 as a family. Furthermore, SSI beneficiaries are prohibited from having retirement accounts, life insurance policies, certain types of personal property, funeral/burial policies, and access to other types of income.
[emphasis mine]
OMG I'm gonna test some means! 
I’ll be honest every person who so much as touched your friend’s moms paperwork in this process deserves to be fucking shot
i agree. she was finally able to get full disability later on but the government forced her to drop the $150k of backpay she was owed in exchange for a couple hundred $ a month
they only survived thanks to a medical settlement payout from different lawsuits.
here's the fun part: her disability was caused by exposure to asbestos from the U.S. military