'Please help us,' cries Social Security user after agency said they owe $4,000 because dead father-in-law was overpaid | MN9VMUR | 2024-05-06 17:08:01
A SOCIAL Security recipient found herself caught in a financial dilemma dating back over 40 years.
Tracey and her husband are sinking under overpayment charges after being told they owe $4,000 back for money that wasn't theirs.
Tracey Jade Boyer made a post in a free legal advice group on Facebook asking for advice after receiving a shocking letter from the Social Security administration.
Told she and her husband owed nearly $4,000 in overpayments, Boyer was confused and took a trip to the local Social Security office to sort things out.
Instead, she was met with more baffling information, learning that the debt was not actually her or her husband's, but her father's husband who died in 1980.
Boyer said she was told the office hadn't contacted the couple until now because her husband was the first of his six children to retire.
But she said her husband retired in 2020 and it was not until October 2022 that the SSA contacted them.
"Please help us," she implored.
Boyer said she was told the office would contact her again by mail in 60 to 90 days.
In the meantime, the office said it would remove the couple's Social Security benefits, according to Boyer, until the debt was paid.
Though she didn't want to wait 60 to 90 days, Boyer feared the SSA would "hijack [their] benefits because [they] did not respond to them for so long.
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Users commented on the post, debating whether the couple owed the SSA the money back, specifically pertaining to the father-in-law who'd passed away 42 years ago.
"The living are not responsible for the debts of the deceased," commented one user.
"They can pay it back with the billions of dollars they keep when people die before retirement age! My grandma and grandpa both died before 60 and worked all their lives. Kids don't get those benefits so why on Earth would they be charged for them?" she wrote.
Another user countered her and wrote that it is actually legal to come after next of kin.
"Thirty states allow it," she wrote.
</div> </div> "Which of you are right? are we responsible or aren't we?" commented Boyer.
The issue is complex and considered on a case-by-case basis by the SSA.
"If the overpaid beneficiary or payee has died, the estate is liable for repayment," according to the SSA.
It also says that those who are recipients of the estate must refund an overpaid amount to the extent of funds received from the estate.
One recipient told the story of how the SSA "took all [her] benefits" after an overpayment of $13,000.
Plus, read about a widow who claimed she was told by the SSA she'd be forced to pay back $80,000 but said the error was "on them."
More >> https://ift.tt/8pil9OB Source: MAG NEWS
