My wife is now almost a year into receiving disability payments, partially for some physical afflictions, but mostly for psychiatric issues. I make too much for her to qualify for medical benefits through them, so she's on my insurance. I bring home roughly $2600/mo while she's getting roughly a $1000/mo from disability. We also get a small check for her son and a small check for our son. I'm sure she would be able to get medical benefits through SS if she were on her own. I keep reading on here about people negotiating out how to divide up things to save on attorney costs, this is what my former wife did and all I had to do was sign off on her papers and it was easy. If I pursue a divorce, I know I would want to have custody of our son due to her mental issues and just the fact that I couldn't imagine being separated from him. So, some questions are:

If we were divorced and I had our son, would he still be entitled to that monthly SS check, or does he have to be physically living with her for it to come?

If I had our son, and with her on disability, could I even expect to get child support payments from her? If I could, would it be possible for me to use this in negotiations with her saying something like, if you let me stay in the house (which I owned premarital) and don't pursue alimony from me, I won't try to get child support from you?

What is this I've been seeing in some threads regarding permanent support? Are some of you actually having to pay permanent support for disabled former spouses even if you didn't have anything to do with the disability? Is this seen more in longer marriages (mine is less than 10 years)?

thanks