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Disability benefits from Social Security can go to certain family members of a covered worker, including a child who is the dependent of the worker. For a child to fit the typical beneficiary category, the child must be unmarried and under 18. This is the standard way a dependent child becomes eligible for disability benefits, with other possible pathways (like under 19 if a full-time student or a disabled adult child) existing but not in this straightforward category.

Older than 18 generally isn’t eligible as a dependent child just for disability benefits, and married children aren’t a usual beneficiary category unless they meet those other conditions. Employers aren’t beneficiaries of individual Social Security disability benefits.

So the category that matches the usual disability-beneficiary rules is an unmarried child younger than 18.