About 14 years ago I got a letter from Social Security. I had been getting SSDI for many years but for the last three years they said they had been over-paying me. I did not know it.The letter said that I had to pay back $15,000. Well naturally I was broke at the time, working only part-time. They said I could appeal if I wanted to. They said I could go to my nearest Social Security office and speak with a worker and state my case for not paying it back. As some people here may be aware of, there care two or three conditions that must be met in order to not pay back money. One : if the over-payment was not yuour fault. Two: If paying it back would create hardship for you.
I figured both conditions were true for me.
So I appealed. And my step-dad volunteered to go with me. He’s a sharp guy and didn’t want then to take advantage of me.’
So we drove down there and we met with a worker. To make a long story short, the worker thumbed through a HUGE sheaf of papers and asked me questions. It was looking bad for me. After 45 minutes he had a empathetic look on his face and an empathetic tone of voice but he the way it was going I knew I had lost my appeal and that I would be paying back this $15,000 for many,many, years. But then he stopped and looked down at one of his forms from my records. He grunted and said, “There’s an error”! Well it turns out that whoever had been in charge of my records had left a key form blank. So this guy tells me that because of that ONE blank form I DID NOT have to pay them back. I was ecstatic to say the least. So we left.
Wow what good luck, good thing it worked out for the best !
That’s the screwy world we live in.
I’m glad it worked out for you. Yay!
Does that mean they will stop overpaying you and your monthly income will be less from now on?
I’m glad it worked out for you. I had almost lost the ability to get on SSI. I had received a letter with the date and time for a meeting, I don’t recall what time or the date it was but I made sure I showed up 15 minutes early. I even had the sense about me to bring the letter for reference. The letter had my name in the return address, the envelope which I had stapled to the letter had my name on it. The woman was going to deny my appointment saying I was late. I told her, pointing to the time on the paper that I early. She read the letter and in the addressed to section it had someone else’s name…someone I didn’t know.
She tried to tell me, “This is addressed to someone else.” But again Pointed everywhere else in the letter that had my name. I’m so glad I had backup paperwork to defend my case to this woman. Clearly this was a mistake on their end and not on mine. She talked to me for about 10 minutes, and I got on SSI a few months later, without any problems. People need to be careful, and those of us with an illness really need to double check that every single i is dotted and every t is crossed, the government could have easily denied me my benefits because of one of their own mistakes. I wonder if they hadn’t done that intentionally too so they could say well this person didn’t show up on time…I wonder whatever happened to the person who the letter was addressed to.
One time Social Security put $5300 in my account and i called and nobody new why. then a year or so later they said they had been overpaying me and wanted around $12000 back which included the $5300 i take it. My dad went to the office and said he was screaming that he was going to take this as far as he could, The Social Security worker was kind enough to forgive my overpayment but my payments had to be in my dads name as a payee and they said they would moniter me and take anything from my account that they set a limit for. Since then everything has been ok, they overpaid again but it was small enough to take from some of my payments. I have been evaluated once to see if I was able to work again, and sent another one 7 years later, then after I filled out some papers I got A letter saying I was not going to be evaluated and if they need to they will contact me. So far I have had good luck with Social Security, I hope it stays.