A few years ago I got a letter from Social Security saying that they over payed my SSDI benefits for several years and that now I have to pay them back $12,000. I was stunned. Obviously, I didn’t have that much money sitting around and it would take me a decade or two to pay them back.
I talked to my family and my step-dad said he would go down to our local Social Security office with me to discuss this issue with them. So we made an appointment and a week later we drove there. We were seen by some middle aged guy and we told him we knew nothing about being over-payed and it would cause me great hardship for many years to pay them back. Those are the criteria for an appeal with them.
But as we talked my chances of getting out of paying them back seemed slim and the office worker went through a huge stack of papers to see all the info they had on me. He basically insinuated that there was no way I could get away with out paying.
But then as he was looking trough the stack of papers he pulled out one sheet of paper and furrowed his brow and read it intensely. Then he talked. He told is that this was a critical form that the person in charge of evaluating SSDI benefits had neglected to fill out. He said that this one blank form meant that I did not have to pay them back a cent.
it was unbelievable. I had been stressed for a week among all my other problems and this issue too. But man, I was so happy. That payment would have changed my life but because of dumb luck I had escaped it. Whew.