Should Social Security Have An Enoch Arden Statute?

     From the Washington Times:

In 1968, a 39-year-old funeral director named Douglas Grensted disappeared while on a hunting trip, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters. A decade later, he was declared legally dead, and Social Security paid his family about $100,000 in survivors’ benefits.

So imagine their shock when they discovered in 2016 that he had been alive all that time — and not only that, the Social Security Administration wanted its money back.

Now the daughters, both in their 60s, worry that they may lose their family home to pay for the fraud perpetrated by their father, who admitted to federal authorities that he ran off to Arizona with his mistress after faking his own death. He died in December 2015. ...

The daughters have asked the Social Security Administration to waive the debt. They were relieved when Administrative Law Judge T. Patrick Hannon ruled that her mother, Barbara Grensted, could repay the $87,000 she owed in increments of $10 per month until her death, at which point the balance would be erased.

When Mrs. Grensted died two months later at the age of 89, however, the judge reversed his ruling. In an Oct. 24 decision, he ordered the balance to be paid by her estate, which is tied up in a trust but includes the house she had long shared with her daughter Beth Grensted, 63, in Mount Herman, California.

Glen Olives, the Santa Cruz attorney who represents Mrs. Grensted and her estate, said he has appealed the decision, calling it “unconscionable.”

“This was an egregious overreach by the Social Security Administration,” Mr. Olives said. “This administrative law judge basically said this lady was without fault but she has to pay it back anyway.” ...

Mr. Grensted had stolen the identity of Richard Morley, a dead man whose funeral he had overseen. He received a new Social Security number in 1969 under the assumed name after saying he had lost his card. ...

Mrs. Grensted and her daughters might have never learned the truth if not for the widow of the actual Mr. Morley, who contacted the SSA a few years ago about her benefits. A federal investigator was assigned to the case when authorities realized the dead Mr. Morley was still earning income and paying taxes. ...

A federal investigator confronted Mr. Grensted, now Mr. Morley, who confessed to the fraud in May 2015. He died — for real this time — seven months later at age 87, without ever contacting his wife or daughters.

Six months later, in June 2016, the investigator reached the family and told them the story. They were floored, particularly Mrs. Grensted, who had no idea that her marriage of 15 years was in such trouble. ...

“You talk to anybody involved with Social Security,” said Mr. Olives, “and they’re going to say this is a most unique case.”

     Actually, except for the identity theft part I've had a very similar case. It's tough on the family. At a certain point, the family would prefer that their missing relative just stay dead. It's easier to accept a mysterious absence than an intentional desertion.
     Historically, the supposedly dead spouse who reappears has been common enough to have led to what are called Enoch Arden statutes, named after a Tennyson poem which employed the plot device of a missing husband who reappeared after his wife, who believed him dead, had remarried.