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Overpayment/Underpayment nightmare

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eliduc

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Oregon
The SSA in April of 2009 claimed an overpayment that was made in 2005 on my minor son's account. I was collecting disability in 2005 and my son was on my number. The SSA never made a disability payment on my son's account in 2005 and in fact owes him eight back payments. The SSA threatened to take the amount of the non overpayment, $847 from my monthly retirement benefits. I filed a Request for Reconsideration and Waiver in April of 2009, requesting a hearing and examination of SSA files relating to the alleged overpayment. The SSA has not responded to that reconsideration request in three years. Now they are threatening to garnish my son's income tax refund. He is a war veteran having served in Afghanistan in the United States Marines and is now enrolled in college under the G.I. Bill. What do you do when the SSA refuses to honor their own appeal process and denies you due process? Do you file a demand for the underpayment with the SSA or file a District Court law suit against the SSA for the underpayment? Can you by pass the reconsideration hearing and file an appeal with the ALJ since the SSA has ignored the Request for Reconsideration? The SSA claimed six overpayments on my son's account in the period from December of 2003 through December of 2004 and confiscated a significant amount of money from my disability benefits after ignoring an earlier Request for Reconsideration.
 
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Onderzoek

Member
Do you have an award letter that states he is owed 8 years of payments? Or is it your opinion that he is owed 8 years of payments? What month/year is he owed payments for and what proof do you have that he should have been paid?

What months did he get paid? Why did payments stop? Did you have direct deposit that shows what you were paid and when?

Do you have proof (a stamped receipt) that you filed this Request for Reconsideration and Request for Waiver? Did you keep copies of the forms that you submitted? Do you have copies of the six overpayment notices that address the period of the overpayment and the amount of each overpayment and the reason for each overpayment?

What does SSA claim that caused these overpayments? Was it the amount of some worker's comp of yours, disability cessation because you returned to work? Was it because another child became entitled?

I doubt that you can force SSA to ignore the reconsideration level. But you can go to your local office with your documents that prove that you filed an appeal and request status. You still might not get very far if SSA has no record of receiving it, which, unfortunately, happens. And, the service reps who are the front line employees generally can't solve your problem in that interview.

Whatever method you used in the past didn't work.

You could also bring all your documents to your local congressperson who can request a status of your reconsideration request. Without documents though, it will be hard for anyone to decipher what you disagree with.
 

eliduc

Junior Member
Nightmare revisited

here are two problems here. 1. The SSA is claiming an overpayment for a period of time that they paid no benefits on my son's account. 2. The SSA owes him for the benefits they failed to pay during the same time period. I will attempt to answer your questions in chronological order. 1. I didn't say he was owed 8 years of payments only eight months, from October 2004 through June of 2005. As primary recipient of his benefit I filed a certified school record with the SSA in the second week of September of 2004 proving he was a full time student eligible for continuing benefits as a minor student beneficiary. His 18th birthday was 9/11/2004. He graduated from high school in June of 2005. Nevertheless, the SSA canceled his benefits in October of 2004 claiming he was not a full time student. My U.S. congressman's aid had been intervening with the SSA on my behalf for some time before this occurred. She contacted the local SSA about this matter. I next received an SSA letter dated 11/11/2004 in which the SSA stated his benefit was being restored and that he would receive what was owed to him. That he would receive continuing benefits from October 2004 through June of 2005 as a minor full time student beneficiary. Yes, I have the letter. I have a file that is three inches thick. At the same time the SSA removed me as the primary recipient of his benefit and reevaluated my disability which I took to be an act of intimidation. The SSA attempted to make his mother, my ex wife the primary beneficiary. I complained that her home was in foreclosure and that I had been made legal guardian of my ten year old daughter by virtue of the fact that her mother had battered her. My son was then made the recipient of his own benefit which was fine with me considering all I had gone through with the SSA. However, the SSA never made another payment to his account. (Yes, all previous payments were paid electronically to my bank account. ) A letter was sent to the SSA by my son in February of 2005 stating that he had not received a payment since September of 2004. He received an answer that stated he was not a full time student which he was. I was out of the loop and my son was no longer living with me so I was not aware that he was not receiving payments after that. Immediately after I received the Overpayment notice in 2009 of $847 for 2005 I filed a request for reconsideration and an automatic waiver of an amount under $1000 in order to stop them from taking it from my benefits. I hand delivered it to the local office and had a copy of both stamped and initialed by the SSA. As I understand it on a notice of overpayment the SSA is required to state the specific reason for the overpayment and state how much was paid for each month of the overpayment and how much should have been paid. The SSA has never done this on any Notice of Overpayment I have received. Basically, they refuse to provide any information that can be used against them. Kathy, the congressman's aide was successful in obtaining a monthly accounting from the SSA showing my son was underpaid in 19 out of 20 monthly payments made in 2003 through 2004. The history of the other five over payments is so convoluted I doubt that it could ever be straightened out. More than once the SSA took money from my benefit and then put money back in without ever giving a reason. The amount of my son's monthly benefit was altered almost bi monthly. At least one minor alleged overpayment was waived. My concern at present is with the current claim of an overpayment. We filed a Request for reconsideration and Waiver and sent it certified mail return receipt in order to stop the SSA from grabbing my son's military tax refund. I have not yet filed a demand for the underpayment as I am not sure yet how I should proceed. I am acting as my son's appointed representative and the proper form for that was also sent certified mail. Kathy is no longer in my congressman's office. A legal aide attorney who specializes in SSA problems informed me that the SSA cannot attempt to collect an overpayment from my son while my reconsideration is pending but that is as far as he would go. The local SSA office has never never been cooperative and even stonewalled the congressman when his aide was working for me. I sent the case to my U.S. Senator last week. I am thinking that an underpayment does not fall under the appeal provisions since there is not even an SSA form for requesting payment of a non payment of benefits. If the SSA refuses to cooperate as they have done in the past an alternative might be to file a U.S. District Court Complaint. The establishment of an underpayment would make mute any claim of an overpayment and in any case what is owed to my son is more than what the SSA claims they overpaid. What is really needed is a disability recipient's bill of rights which protects the disabled and makes the SSA accountable.
 

Onderzoek

Member
Sorry about my incorrect assumption that you meant 8 years. Didn't read close enough.

Yes, it does sound really convoluted.

As far as the money due your son because he was a full-time student, if it is true that you had another child on the record for the time period (you mention a 10 year old), in order for your son to get paid, your daughter may have to be determined to be overpaid because if she received the family max and some of it should have gone to him, the only way to pay it to him is to take it back from her.

I still think you need to go into your local office with your 3" stack of documents and first talk to a frontline employee (who, by the way, had nothing to do with any of this so try to contain your rightful indignation), resubmit the documents, get them date stamped, and ask that the front line employee do the appropriate computer input to show that the documents were received. You also may need to talk with the supervisor.

It is doubtful that you will get satisfaction at that interview since everything will require review at the payment center, but this should give you a go-between person. Hopefully you'll get an experienced service rep, but many of them have only a few years on the job.

Be sure to bring your appointment of rep signed by your son (SSA 3288, not an SSA 1696)

Choose a day of the month that may be the least busy - middle to end of the month, not the first day of the week. Bring your IPad or a good book. Try to stay calm. I do think you have some valid grievances, but SSA is such a large organization, it is impossible for all employees to be experts in everything. And the frontline employees are the ones you get to deal with. They know a little about alot. And you need someone who knows alot about a little.
 

eliduc

Junior Member
I didn't make myself clear. My daughter is five years older than my Son and was 23 when the overpayment was claimed. She never was a beneficiary. I've been through the front window thing before and I have never been discourteous. The last time I was there they told me they couldn't talk to me because I had a Reconsideration pending. When they bring up my name on the computer it's like a curtain falls across their face. They closed our local office. Our town is 60,000 people and there are several outlying towns in Oregon and California that the office served. It is a hundred mile drive one way from here over a mountain pass to the nearest SSA office. Our office was a satellite of that office and it was open one day a week. Some people now have to drive over 200 miles one way for an interview or a hearing. Your advice is good but I think I will wait to see if the senator accomplishes anything. I talked to his aid on the telephone and he was cooperative. Thanks.
 

eliduc

Junior Member
Update to Nightmare

A brief review. In 2009 I received a notice of overpayment. The SSA claimed the SSA had overpaid my son in 2005 when I was collecting SSA disability and he was a minor beneficiary on my account. The SSA stated they were taking the $847 from my retirement benefit to satisfy his overpayment. My son received no benefit payment in 2005 and in fact is owed benefits for 2004/2005. The SSA never responded to my reconsideration request and in 2011 sent a letter to my son threatening to attach his military IRS refund. We filed a second Request for Reconsideration in my son's name which the SSA did not respond to. I am his authorized representative.

I did end up going to our local SSA office in March of 2012. The experience was not a total loss. I was provided with a letter that stated that my son does not owe an $847.00 overpayment and his overpayment balance is zero. No explanation was given. The letter was addressed to him and sent to the wrong address in February of 2012. The address on the letter is the former address of his mother. This is curious because neither my son nor I ever provided that address to the SSA as his mailing address. My ex wife vacated the home six years ago. The SSA rep. stated that the benefits he did not receive from October of 2004 through June of 2005 had been electronically deposited into his Chase account in 2005 after he had been made recipient of his benefit. When I told her he had never received a payment and asked what name was on the Chase account she refused to tell me. I find this extremely rude where he may have the right to seek damages from the person who erroneously received his benefit. When I had a chance to talk to him it turns out that he never has had a Chase bank account and never made any arrangement with any bank or the SSA for direct deposit of his benefit checks. We put in a claim for an underpayment of $2001.00 in January 2012. To date the SSA has not acknowledged having received the claim.

I also received a Notice of this Overpayment in April of 2009 in which the SSA stated they were taking the $847 lump sum from my retirement benefit. My Request for Reconsideration and Waiver kept them from taking the money from my account. The SSA has never responded to that request.

My son may have been sent a letter from the SSA stating that he has no overpayment owing but I did not receive any such letter. The SSA has failed to respond to my request for reconsideration that was filed over three years ago. In 2010 the SSA issued Emergency Message 1092 to their field offices mandating that every Title II Request for Reconsideration “..without exception, receive a formal determination.” Field offices had been routinely ignoring Requests for Reconsideration without making a determination when the determination would not have been favorable to the SSA. It appears that my local office also ignored EM 1092. This has the effect of denying the recipient due process in a case like my son's where the defense of an overpayment is that there is an alleged underpayment. Failing to make a reconsideration determination where the SSA is in the wrong also tweaks the statistics in favor of the SSA. This is a rogue agency that blatantly and routinely disregards its own rules and the Social Security Act.
 

BL

Senior Member
The SSA rep. stated that the benefits he did not receive from October of 2004 through June of 2005 had been electronically deposited into his Chase account in 2005 after he had been made recipient of his benefit. When I told her he had never received a payment and asked what name was on the Chase account she refused to tell me
Then he needs to inquire about said underpayments.

Or,as was suggested ,contact his local congress person.

Perhaps his mother contacted SSA to have those benefits put in her name for him at Chase.

He needs to inquire.

It's not at all unusual for SSA to send out contradicting notices.

Recipients or their payee have to keep on top of it with SSA.
 

eliduc

Junior Member
Waiting

I haven't been here in a while. I filed a formal notice of an underpayment with the local SSA office by certified mail ion March. I have been waiting to see what their response would be. So far, as usual there has been no response. I will next call the local office to inquire about the status of the underpayment. My ex wife denied having received my son's benefit checks. Who knows? If she had I would not pursue it. However, for all we know the checks could have been going into the electronic account of an SSA employee. That's not likely but it is possible.
 

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