From WMAR:
A Maryland senior is fighting an overpayment notice from the Social Security Administration. The additional money was supposedly paid out to her brother, but now the agency is withholding her monthly retirement benefits.
“They caught their mistake and tried to collect the money, but he had passed," said Everlon Moulton, whose brother died in 2006. Moulton said shortly before then, she had become his financial representative. ...
According to a letter sent to Moulton last November, Congress passed a law permitting the Social Security Administration to collect Supplemental Security Income (SSI) overpayments from the individual's payee. The SSA identified payments to Moulton's brother, while he was still alive, that exceeded the amount he should've received. Moulton said she never used money designated for her brother and was informed that $233 will be deducted from her monthly retirement benefits until the nearly $6,900 overpayment to her brother is settled. ...
If she only became the representative payee shortly before her brother died how did she become responsible for a debt that must have accrued before she became involved?
8 comments:
Payee will be solely responsible for the overpayment, regardless of whether he/she knew of the overpayment; If the SSI payments were used for your support and maintenance and your payee knew or should have known of the overpayment, then you and your Rep. Payee will both be responsible for the overpayment.
Always more to the stories you post from the media.
This claw-back activity is really getting out of hand. It is so unclear to recipients, let alone representative payees, how and when to report income and all the other factors that a person is set up for failure from day one of receiving benefits. And to go after third parties for this years later is just ridiculous. If it was funds received due to direct fraud that would be one thing. Otherwise the circumstances need to be very thoroughly evaluated.
It's hard to know without more details. 11 months at the 2006 FBR would yield an overpayment around that size, and we don't know when she became the payee other than "shortly" before death. If he was in a Medicaid-funded nursing home (which would make sense with SSA not having an address for him back in 2006) or even slightly above the resource limit it's not hard to be overpaid. Agree that she shouldn't be responsible for the part that happened before she became payee and I wonder if she's requested a waiver or just reconsideration (hopefully they can take the recon request as an implied waiver request). I wonder if SSA only found out where the former payee was once she applied for retirement herself? Did they not refer for treasury offset in all these years?
Also I wonder how SSA got $233 a month. Is that 10% of her retirement benefit? It's not 10% of SSI, and it's not the overpayment divided by 60 or 36 months.
Sounds like an easy waiver approval. And before anyone says “she shouldn’t have to file a waiver” you’re right. But she does so she should.
Did anyone in the comments actually read the linked article? Sure doesn't seem like it. The biggest takeaway is there is no indication of WHY the overpayment happened. It says that the person received more money than they should have....but we don't know WHY? Wages? Some other taxable income that wasn't reported? Maybe it was reported and SSA dropped the ball? It's all speculation and at least a few comments are just throwing out random crap without knowing the actual details of what happened.
"After receiving the notification, Moulton filled out a form requesting the agency reconsider its decision."
Well, this would be the wrong form. She's appealing the facts of the overpayment, not the fairness or inequity of her having to repay it.
11:22am and 12.19 are spot on. I am hesitant to say anymore because, again, no one here knows the true facts of the overpayment, so it's stupid to speculate based on the current O/P rules SSA uses. Shoulda, woulda, coulda....
That’s doesn’t seem to be the case here but otherwise, that would be correct.
It's difficult to find an article like this that ever gives enough information to know what really happened. Key details are always left out, perhaps because they are not known or for other reasons.
In my experience at SSA, stories like this aren't uncommon among overpaid individuals when they come to the office. Most of the time there was a letter that may have been confusing but that indicated the overpayment was correct. SSI records used to be fairly easy to read to determine the reason for overpayment.
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