Kree Flowers had recently gotten married and decided to log into her account on the Social Security Administration website in February to check the status of her retirement benefits. She was shocked to see a large red number at the top of the page. According to the agency, she was overpaid $17,121.21.
“At this point, I immediately think of fraud,” she said. “Someone collected benefits under my name – that’s what I thought.”
When Ms. Flowers called the agency the next morning, a representative told her that she had been overpaid for services between 1995 and 2003 and that she was expected to pay back the balance. This made no sense to her: she was 10 years old when the disputed payments began. “My first instinct was to laugh and correct him,” she said.
But Ms. Flowers said the representative seemed unimpressed with her age and instructed her to fill out a form to dispute the allegations. A few days later, her sister discovered that she had been overpaid by the same amount.
According to federal data, the SSA has made between $6 billion and $10 billion in overpayments for various benefit programs each year for the past four years. The agency had an uncollected overpayment balance of $23 billion as of October. That's a small fraction of the more than $1.4 trillion the agency pays to about 71 million people each year.
A recent investigative report from KFF Health News and Cox Media found that while overpayments are sometimes due to agency or beneficiary errors, “a majority of the errors lie in the system.” Benefit rules are difficult to comply with, the SSA is understaffed, and there are often long delays between changes in beneficiaries' income and adjustments to their benefits. All of this can lead to overpayments that may go unnoticed for years.
Ms. Flowers, 38, called the agency dozens of times looking for answers. “No one could ever really tell us what happened,” she said. Previous notices of overpayment went to an old address, so Ms. Flowers had to figure this out herself. She suspects the problem stems from disability payments the agency made to her estranged father. (Social Security officials told her they were not allowed to reveal her father's private information.)
In the 1990s, when her parents were separated and living in different states but still married, Ms. Flowers' father applied for and received payments through the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which can cover recipients' children. Her mother recalled receiving monthly payments of $100 or $120 for about a year, but nowhere near $34,000 over eight years.
Individuals receiving Social Security disability benefits may not earn more than $1,470 per month in additional income after a nine-month trial period; Beyond this threshold, their benefits are generally canceled. However, there is often a delay between the time when people no longer qualify for benefits and the time when their payments stop, either because they are not aware that they need to report a change in circumstances or because the Administration was slow to process her case.
In an interview, Ms. Flowers' father said he believed he was entitled to benefits during the overpayment period and that it was unclear to him what happened. He said it was “outrageous” that the SSA would try to recover money from people who were children at the time of payment.
The overpayment wasn't the Flowers siblings' fault, and it may not have been their father's fault either. But the sisters were responsible for it.
“I would say that work-related overpayments are the rule, not the exception,” said Denise Hoffman, principal investigator at Mathematica, a research and data analysis consulting firm. Their research found that while overpayments in disability insurance are rare overall, people whose income exceeds the threshold were overpaid in about 80 percent of cases. Ms. Hoffman noted that the average overpayment lasted nine months and totaled $9,282.
Under agency rules, dependents or spouses listed on the recipient's records may be held liable for overpayments. People can also be held liable if they manage payments on behalf of someone else, such as a minor child or an elderly relative with dementia.
It's not clear how often the agency attempts to recover overpayments from relatives of account holders. An SSA spokesman said its system was not designed to easily determine this information and that efforts were being made to resolve the issue. About 30 percent of people whose overpayments were written off in the previous fiscal year were under 18 when their parents received benefits, according to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report.
Stopped payments, withheld tax returns
In 2015, when Sarah Benavidez's daughter was two months old, Ms. Benavidez and the child's father visited the local SSA office to inquire about receiving benefits for the girl. They were told their daughter was entitled to payments because her father, a former police officer, had been injured at work and was entitled to disability insurance. Eventually, Ms. Benavidez was paid about $300 a month.
“It helped a lot, especially when she was in diapers,” she remembers.
The child's father left soon after, Ms. Benavidez said, but she continued to receive checks for her daughter. In 2020, she received a letter from the SSA saying the father had been receiving workers' compensation payments and disability checks at the same time, resulting in an overpayment.
Parents initially reported workers' compensation, but overpayments can still occur if “no one at Social Security has done the proper budgeting,” said Anne Callagy, director of the government benefits practice at the Legal Aid Society in New York. “And then years later they get a notification of the overpayment.”
As a result, Ms. Benavidez's five-year-old daughter owed the Social Security Administration $12,768. “I thought, ‘Is this a scam?’” Ms. Benavidez said.
The letter said she had 30 days to pay the money back or her daughter's Social Security payments would stop. Ms. Benavidez requested a reconsideration of the charges, but was unsuccessful. It wasn't enough to prove the overpayment wasn't her fault — to win the appeal, she also had to prove she couldn't pay the money back, said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities .
“Almost no one successfully completes the process,” she said of overpayment forgiveness applications.
Ms. Benavidez's daughter was still entitled to $120 per month, which the SSA withheld and applied to the overpayment balance. If nothing changes, her daughter's overpayments will be considered repaid in 2030. According to the 2016 GAO report, more than 75 percent of reimbursed disability insurance overpayments are collected through withheld payments.
“I just feel like they're taking the money until they feel like they've paid it off,” Ms. Benavidez said. “I don’t even know if I want it back. I’ll be paranoid.”
Recipients sometimes receive overpayment letters long after they have stopped receiving benefits, and the SSA attempts to recoup the money through other means.
Temi Aina, a Queens resident, learned she was overcharged when she didn't receive her expected tax refund. A few weeks later, a letter from the SSA arrived saying she had received overpayments totaling $11,681 in her father's account over the four years that began in 2005, when she was 13 . Her brother also had debts.
She fought the case and presented evidence showing that her father had not used the money to her advantage. The case dragged on for two years. She lost two tax refunds totaling about $1,000 and at one point received a letter saying the SSA would begin garnishing her wages. But when the agency contacted her former employer, she had already changed jobs, so the change did not take effect immediately.
Fight against debt
Ms. Benavidez, Ms. Flowers and Ms. Aina all attempted to address their overpayment debts through the standard grievance process.
After Ms. Flowers filed her appeal papers, she saw a TikTok video posted by someone in a similar situation. The person had contacted the local representative in Congress about the issue. Ms. Flowers, who lives in Norcross, Georgia, contacted Representative Lucy McBath, whose office contacted the SSA. Ms. Flowers appeared at a hearing this summer and was told that the financial information she provided proved she could not repay the money. Her overpayment of $17,121 was withdrawn from her account. Her sister's case continues.
Ms Flowers made a viral TikTok video about her experience and said she had heard from hundreds of people with similar stories.
Ms. Benavidez, who lives in Louisiana, saw Ms. Flowers' video and tried to contact her House representative, Clay Higgins. She hopes to be helped to resolve the overpayment. The SSA continues to withhold her daughter's $120 payments.
An agency representative said it has been working with people to navigate the overpayment process. People have the right to appeal any overpayment or pursue a repayment plan with options starting at $10 per month.
Ms. Aina eventually contacted a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society who helped her. In July 2021, her remaining overpayment balance was forgiven.
Ms Aina said she cried tears of joy when she found out the remaining debt had been paid. “I'm really glad it worked in my favor because I don't think anyone should have to go through something like that if it's not their fault,” she said. Her brother's overpayment remains unclear.