Angelina Maria Colabella doesn’t have to pay.Earlier this month, Colabella, who receives Social Security disability benefits, received a letter from Social Security. It said through the years, the agency had overpaid Colabella nearly $59,000 and she had 30 days to pay it back.
Colabella had her meeting with the agency and it reviewed her case.
"Social Security reversed its decision in my favor," Colabella said. "I’m just thrilled. I don’t have to worry anymore." ...
"There was a string of times she went over one month or more, but by averaging the year she was under," said Bill Hayden, an attorney with the Community Health Law Project, who represented Colabella at the SSA meeting. "It never should have gotten that far." ...
Hayden said mistakes like this are not uncommon in his experience. He said there is a delay before Social Security receives a beneficiary’s earnings records, but usually only a year or two.
‘‘For this, someone went back 10 years to retroactively do it," he said.
May 25, 2010
One Overpayment In New Jersey
From the Newark Star-Ledger:
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3 comments:
i am glad it was ruled in her favor, but if it wasnt there is no way no one can come up with that kind of money in 30 days. to come up with that kind of money she would have to sell a house or take out a second loan for one. and that would take more than 30 days. what are they thinking if its over 5000 dollars they should give them more time.
SSA doesn't make you pay the whole O/P at one time. If she got an O/P notice she had at least 60 days to appeal and she could have even filed a waiver. That would have put a hold on the O/P recovery until a decision was made.
If the appeal and waiver were denied, she could do partial recovery and if she isn't receiving benefits, she could do installment payments. If she was receiving benefits the worst that would happen is they would take her whole check until the O/P was recovered.
SSA isn't the IRS, no need to fear getting an O/P notice.
Work issue CDR's are way behind due to lack of staff, and often poorly done for the same reason.
When resources are dedicated to catching them up, this is the kind of thing that ends up happening. All SSA overpayments should be challenged by all beneficiaries due to the high likelihood of errors.
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