A Cleveland television station reports on a Social Security overpayment case. Here's the scenario. Woman's mother dies. She says she informed Social Security of the death yet the direct deposit of her mother's Social Security benefits continued for ten years. At one point she even opened a new bank account to continue receiving the money. She says that over the years she just never thought about the bank account and never took out any of the money. Now she's worrying about repaying all the money.
Does this story add up to you?
By the way, the television station's take on the story was only to wonder how in the world Social Security kept paying benefits all that time.
12 comments:
How can she worry about repaying the money when she never took it out?
@8:43 Exactly. The money should still be there to return to them. I'm starting to feel that if SSA overpays anyone, they shouldn't be able to recover the money unless it is fraud on the part of the payee. That, in a normal world, would most likely solve the problem if they had no way to recover an overpayment. Or not... who knows. I know of an individual who is currently fighting over a a one year overpayment, SSA told the claimant the money is theirs, and to spend it, even though said person had been working for over a year. Repeated attempts to stop payments failed. The repeated reports have been verified by SSA even. Now they want their money back. Is this becoming a permanent problem? The waste sure has picked up the past few years, I've noticed. I'm sure I'm not the only one that is noticing?
Probably money is all gone. Maybe she didn't inform SSA of her mother's death. Hard to say much with so little information.
re: 8:43AM -- I suspect the "worry" aspect is involved because the money obviously wasn't in the bank account as "somebody" took it and spent it. And SSAOIG is probably looking into exactly whom that "somebody" was right about now. Make your own guesses.
SSA used to be able to send the paltry death benefit to funeral homes, but they stopped that practice. It was a failsafe way to stop such draining of the decreasing reserves SSA built up during the greatest generation's working years. It is now being drained monthly. Was 4 trillion at its height.
As a retired ALJ who was more often than not very liberal, I can tell you I would not believe this woman. If she is worried about paying it back then she obviously has used the money although she claims she didn't. I can actually see SSA continuing to send the checks as I've seen it time and time again, but her argument doesn't mesh with the facts and she contradicts herself when she claims she didn't think about the money but now she's worried about paying it back!
To the person talking about the death benefit that's apples and oranges.
The problem here is we don't know all the facts. If she was taking money from the account, then it looks bad for her. If someone else was taking money... bad for them. However, she could still be "worried" if she hadn't taken any money or only took money near the the time of death. Maybe she is "worried" because she doesn't trust the government or the police. At this point, any conclusion is speculation. Well, except that SSA's checks and balances to prevent this are woefully inadequate.
No, this story doesn't add up. Agree with @8:43 and @4:50. Once she reported that her mother had died, she should have closed the account and made sure the bank knew. If they mailed her a paper check, she could have returned it in person. I have heard of people receiving checks for someone as long as a year and they got in trouble.
I agree that as in most media stories about SSA, it doesn't add up based on the material as presented. That's par for the course.
Regardless, this should be an easy case to develop. I hope there is follow-up and we get to learn the outcome. I especially want to know why an application for representative payee was adjudicated so long after the beneficiary's death, and who was involved with that.
The point of the post about the Lump Sum Death Benefit is that, for $255 payable to the funeral home (if no relative on the priority list), SSA received the valuable info that that beneficiary was dead and SSA could immediately stop the checks. Now SSA "saves" the $255 but pays out thousands instead, plus the cost of catching and prosecuting the fraud.
I actually thought the LSDP was a great way to catch other entitlements, widow, DAC, child in care, why the $255 is useless, it does catch a lot of people that would have missed benefits.
As for this case, we don't know the facts, but I do like that people that represent claimants went straight to the throat and called fraud. Must be from all the clients they see.
Why in the heck would the daughter open a different account? If someone is deceased, payments should STOP. Just because they keep being deposited does not alleviate the next of kin being responsible to report again and again if needed. It is only a courtesy, not mandatory for funeral homes to submit form SSA-721. Daughter should have provided death certificate to SSA. Where is it stated SSA made daughter the representative payee after death? Something fishy and highly fraudulent involved with this. Just my personal opinion though.
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