Quite a while later, and thanks to @arne, I created this similar small function to handle where the input should be disabled AND hidden, or enabled AND shown:
function toggleInputState(el, on) {
// 'on' = true(visible) or false(hidden)
// If a field is to be shown, enable it; if hidden, disable it.
// Disabling will prevent the field's value from being submitted
$(el).prop('disabled', !on).toggle(on);
}
Then a jQuery object (such as $('input[name="something"]') ) is simply switched using:
toggleInputState(myElement, myBoolean)