An Overpayment In Atlanta

     From an Atlanta television station:

... After fourteen years with no problems, the agency admits it made a mistake and they want her to pay them back to the tune of almost a quarter million dollars, and 63 year old Jamella Hall doesn't have it. ...

Documents show the Social Security Administration determined in 1998 that Hall qualified for disability benefits, which never exceeded $1,600 a month. But in September of 2017, after 14 years with no problems, the  agency notified Hall she should have been paid $215,000 less and the agency would be taking back $436 dollars a month for 493 months. That's 41 years. ...

Records show Hall was given 60 days to request an appeal. But one year later, she's still waiting and the disabled former teacher's monthly benefits have diminished to $1. Her sister, who's been footing the bills, says they're almost bankrupt. ...

After repeated efforts to get answers, the giant agency's regional communications director declined to comment stating privacy laws. But the director did apologize for the inconvenience to Hall and stated her issue would be addressed.

One week later, Hall was told her payments would be resumed. ...

  There's no way for me to tell what happened in this case. In general, this is my list of priorities in dealing with an overpayment case:

1. Why was the claimant overpaid? 
2. Is Social Security correct is saying there is an overpayment? (I've had a couple of cases over the years where by the time we got through, Social Security admitted that not only was there no overpayment, they owed the claimant money!) 
3. Is the overpayment correctly computed? (The amount is usually incorrect; not sometimes, usually.)
4. Is it too late to appeal the fact of the overpayment?
5. Does the claimant qualify for waiver of the overpayment?
6. Even if the claimant doesn't qualify for waiver, is there a dependent on the account who was overpaid? Dependents almost always get waiver even if the primary beneficiary is a really bad actor.
7. Social Security is not supposed to be trying to collect on an overpayment until there's a reconsideration determination on the fact of the overpayment and/or waiver of the overpayment, which are two separate matters. Make sure they don't.
8. If we're past reconsideration, work out a repayment schedule so they don't seize all the monthly benefits while we're waiting for an Administrative Law Judge decision or appeal beyond that level. (Obviously, this woman needed this advice a long time ago.)
9. In the unlikely event the claimant has the money to make a lump sum payment of the overpayment, they'll give the claimant a discount. As much as this overpayment is, they'd probably take less than 50%.

     In other words, there's a lot an attorney can do in overpayment cases. Unfortunately, few of these claimants can pay a fee and there's no practical way for an attorney to represent a claimant on a contingent fee basis. Also, because attorneys can seldom get a fee from an overpayment case, most attorneys don't know how to handle the cases.

     By the way, this overpayment goes back quite a few years. It's very possible that this is one of the cases where a claimant reported return to work but Social Security made no record of it. This used to happen a lot until Congress ordered that Social Security create a system for recording reports of return to work. That's right. At one time Social Security lacked any system for recording reports of return to work which led to large numbers of overpayments that weren't the fault of the claimant.