Aug 11, 2007

A Resurrection

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

SPOKANE -- Eight years after a judge declared him dead, the Social Security Administration says Judy Sullivan's husband is alive, and it wants back more than $90,000 in survivor's benefits she has received.

But Sullivan doesn't think the person who applied for a new Social Security card and a driver's license in an unspecified Eastern state is Jack Sullivan, her husband of 25 years who disappeared without a trace in 1991. ...

Social Security officials have not responded to her requests to prove the person is not an identity thief, Weiser said. ...

"I can tell you it's devastating because I don't know now. I just can't believe that my husband is alive," she said. "I just can't believe he would do something this way. It's not him. He's just not this kind of a person." ...

Meanwhile, the legal clinic [representing Mrs. Sullivan] has asked for a waiver of the benefits "overpayment" until the matter can be resolved. Allen Gilbert, an official of the agency's Spokane office, told The Spokesman-Review the chances of the waiver being approved are good because Sullivan applied for and received the benefit money in good faith.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Seems that it would be pretty easy to prove if it was her husband that applied for the SSN card by looking at the application signature and comparing it to the signature on any other applications he submitted.

Now as for as this woman paying that money back, I would bet money on it being an approved waiver.