It took my mom almost a decade to get proven alive by the federal government. When she died, though, they stopped her social security check THE NEXT DAY
I’ve heard of grieving families being billed by the government because their loved one passed a few minutes before midnight on the day before their check drops. Government be all “yeah she gets paid on the 3rd but she died at 11:56pm on the coroners report so you owe us all that money back.
@@backwoodstherapy believe it or not, SS can back charge that last check and make it disappear from the bank account. Had it happen when my mother passed away.
Trump is upping the ante. You wouldn't believe the amount of chaos going on right now caused by these Executive Orders not having been thought through or coming without implementation guidance. It's making Hertz look like they have their act together.
*_Funnily_*_ enough,_ though. You wouldn't say, _he was funny proven alive._ "Funny" is an adjective; while _funnily_ is the adverb that you're looking for.
"Got ID to prove who you are" Yes, here's my drivers license, social security card & passport. "Those are invalid, as they were issued to someone who is now deceased"...
Watch out for the double whammy! A friend did not receive her SS payment. When she called the local SS office, she was told she was dead. Told she needed to go to the Regional office (Washington DC). Was told there that the local office needed to handle this. Finally straightened out, BUT then received notice her life insurance was cancelled because she was dead. It would be paid out on proof via death certificate. Wrote a letter to insurance. Next week got another letter from SS. OOPS! she was dead AGAIN! Reported by insurance company.
Second one should result in a lawsuit against the SS for gross negligence; after one bogus death report the next one should be silently discarded without a date of death after the time last observed alive. You don't reject the record as that will encourage putting in a date until it gets accepted, rather you treat the original report as valid but the person was resurrected.
This happened to my mother. We went to the SS office after her husband died, and the woman behind the desk informed her that she was; in fact, dead. She went to some lengths to convince my mom that she was not alive despite her sitting there arguing with the clerk. It took some doing to get it sorted out.
This should not happen but as someone who has little contact with the outside world as someone without a job or a close friend circle? Yeah, I'm terrified of this happening to me and I am only 44 years old.
Canadian. A friend of mine was declared dead by his ex spouse. Bank canceled cards and froze bank account. He almost lost his home because he could not pay his mortgage. His insurance went up as he was then deemed as a new driver. It took 6 months for him to straighten out every thing. Had to get new ID, medical card, ect.
My mom was declared dead a few years ago. After 6 months of trying to get the issue fixed, the only thing that helped was getting the local news involved. Then she actually got some help.
My family went through this. When my grandfather passsed away, somehow my grandmother was also declared dead. It was several months before we could get it resolved. Meanwhile she couldn't afford her medication because she no longer had Medicare and almost lost her house because she was no longer getting Social Security.
They make separate judgements. What a court says isn't always what they say. And they have their own enforcement arm. So... at least taxes are certain....
@@popenieafantome9527 If someone dies during the year their executor will file a return for the person who has died. So yes a return still have to be filed for someone who has died.
Happened to me when I was 18. Social Security had someone who typed my number instead of someone else. Bank cancelled my account, couldn’t attend college. Couldn’t get a credit card. Had to pay for my car cash. Had to pay for my school cash. Had to pay for my house cash. Went to court and was declared alive. Social security wouldn’t take it. Finally the federal court ordered the local social security administrator to appear before him and discuss, under pain of contempt, why they wouldn’t correct my records. Before the hearing, my records were corrected. I still couldn’t get a credit card until I was 50. The credit reporting bureaus still said I was dead after more than thirty years. GIGO.
It happened to me in 2022, and I'm still dealing with the aftermath, even though I was able to get Social Security to correct it within weeks. (IRS wouldn't accept my 2024 tax return. They did however cash the check. And they did accept 2023(?)) Discover and American Express froze credit cards; AE were real a**holes about restoring theirs, although of course they accepted payments of balances. Medical insurances were canceled, and one of them dropped my wife when reinstating. I can see how a person with less resources than I could be seriously harmed, even killed for real.
My dad had the opposite. He died when I was 12 and more then a year after his death a tax collector came to our house asking where he was. I sent him to the graveyard two streets away without telling him he died. " Through the gates, last isle to the left, about halfway on your left is where he is now" he came back 20min later and apologized profusely, but it took another year before the tax office got the memo and stopped bothering my mom.
This actually happened to one of my patients and they cancelled his medicare and social security check. He went to the local SSI office and raised hell 😅😅 In his case someone with the same first and last name died
I went to make a medical appt. with my large HMO (starts with K) but couldn't because my membership was inactive due to my "death". Another member of the HMO with a similar name had died and I was declared un-alive. To the HMO's credit they had everything straightened out within 48 hours after I made some phone calls.
When she is alive again, the insurance company is going to deny her claims as not being an enrolled member, so she will still be on the hook for her health care during that time.
My work accidentally cancelled my insurance (even though I got charged for it). They had issued new cards (new policy) and cancelled the old one. Fixed the glitch by cancelling the new one (without reinstating the old one). Never told me - found out at the hospital. When I went to my Benefits person at work I had to prove (paystub) I paid for insurance. Six weeks for them to figure it out and fix it (reinstated the old policy). Then fun getting all the claims fixed. When I resubmitted they were immediately declined because they had already been declined (for no policy). Then had to go back and get help to get that all fixed as well. Then they charged fees because it was not direct billed. So I had to go again and get that fixed as well (I had paid cash so the hospital/doctor did not refile claims). I think it was a total of 6 months before it was all complete and I was reimbursed.
It happened to my Husband about 6 years ago. We are still suffering the repercussions of their mistake. They gave us 10 years of free credit monitoring.
When my wife died, I went to the credit union to get a credit card in my own name, because they canceled our existing card. They turned me down because I was listed as dead by the credit reporting agency. I had to get the original reporting company to withdraw their report, but the agency would not tell me who that was. I disputed, and that worked. Turns out it was the credit union itself who reported both of us dead. They never apologized, but they did withdraw the report.
It was never meant to be used like this. Even the statute says so. But like most things the government does, once the worm is out of the can, hard to get it back in.
The Social Security website itself says: "Organizations should avoid using Social Security numbers (SSNs) as identifiers for any type of transaction." That's part of the problem. The government refuses to make SSNs and SS cards secure because "nobody should be using SSNs as an identifier." The whole thing needs to be replaced with some sort of private/public key system. The holder of the private key is the only one able to encrypt messages which can be decrypted by the public key. So you give them a random message, they encode it, you decode it with their public key, confirm it matches the random message you gave them, and that confirms they're the person the public key belongs to.
@@solandri69 I remember when I was in the Army (70's -90's) they used your social security for EVERYTHING. and I do mean everything. Some states used your social security number as your drivers license number. It seemed that every piece of paper in the army had a social security release statement attached telling you that you don't have to put your social security number on the form, but if you do everything you do will be null and void. Thing is, before the All volunteer Army in the 70's everyone were issued service numbers that had nothing to do with social security numbers. I am not sure how they do it now, but I think they went back to issuing service numbers.
@@nolongeramused8135 Kind of, No one can FORCE you to use your social security number for identification. However that does not stop it from being done. And the IRS specifically uses your social security number as your TAX ID number. (Businesses get tax id for taxation purposes that use the exact same number of digits used by social security but in a different format instead of xxx-xx-xxxx they use xx-xxxxxxxx.
This is the thing that freaks me out when people start talking about the state of immigration in the U.S. The difference between being a citizen and not a citizen is some paperwork. That's it! All of us are only ever a few keystrokes away from having a very bad day!
If the SSA "unalived" 10,000 of its employees a year arbitrarily, by internal process or with external help, would that be a trivial number to them? What if they had treble damages on that count imposed, for fraud and malice?
I had something similar happen to me when I was about 22. At some point Social Security changed my birthday. It took me a long time to even figure out why I was having so many issues until someone suggested I check with the SS office. Sure enough, my birth date was change from the month of Nov. to the month of July. The struggle to get it changed back was brutal. I *think* it was changed when my sister died (her birthday was in July). It was years before I could get it straightened out and suffered some of the same heartaches mentioned here. I remember one agent telling me that they could not simply just change it, there was a long process. My response was "Well some 'just' changed it a few years ago!" It was very painful.
@@tomc101 AND, you can then vote many times! Those old enough to remember Richard J Daley sr, he was always getting votes from cemeteries! Of course when it was investigated, the elections board found no wrongdoing!
Apparently so because most states do not require voter ID... and you can't be purged from the voter rolls for skipping numerous elections. Interesting fact: Of Kammy Harris's 19 states that she won, 18 of those do not require voter ID.
I was naturalized in Michigan when I was 4 yo. When I went to college in California, they suggested I change my name (very common first and last names) to include my native name so I'd be less likely to be confused with others. That seemed like a good idea, so I visited the Social Security Administration and filled out a name change request form. This was in the late 1980s. They had to request the office in Michigan, which had the original copy of my naturalization papers, mail it over to them in California. Apparently my copy was not good enough. They needed the copy the government kept for itself.
@@solandri69 Your copy should have been more than good enough because it is IDENTICAL to the other copy other than the words "For the individual" or something equivalent on it.
@ They don't need a chain of custody. As long as they can verify the information on the copy is VALID (which they should be able to do with a simple phone call or even access to a website today), that's all they need.
@@christopherkidwell9817 That's what they told me they had to do, so that's what I waited for. If there's one thing I've found, it's that government workers frequently don't know the "correct" way to do things. And often do it whatever way they think it should be done. In the end I got my name changed and a new SS card.
Simple, dead people dont have to follow the rules. You dont have to go to work. You dont have to pay for anything like parking. Once they realise that you are costing them so much money, they will quickly revive you.
After being dead for 7 years, my neighbors brother showed up. Seems he moved, so mail from the governemen, Social Security etc, was returned. They declared him dead from a returened letter.
As a retired person. If this were to happen to me it would be VERY troublesome. My pension(s) would stop, m Social Security would stop, my health care (Medicare) would stop. My bank accounts would be locked. Of course your credit cards stop working, and you can no longer pay your bills. You also cannot vote, and since you are a non person you lose all of your civil rights. How do you go prove that your alive? Do you get a doctors note? Then what do you do? the paperwork mountain would be tremendous. And I bet that just after you get everything taken care of you will have a heart attack from all the stress!
Happened to me last year. Went into SSA office with a name change I had gotten after my estranged husband's death. 2 days later tried to get a new drivers license and, no, we can't, SSA says you are dead. Went back to the SSA office and told them and they explained the process "takes a few days". In my case, about 10, so I'm feeling very fortunate after reading some of these experiences. During that time, my bank account was frozen, my social security check was rescinded, and I was without health insurance. But the social security card with the name change came in the mail!
Yeah, no kidding. They altered my birthdate at the IRS, said I don't exist, and declared me dead. They told me I am the only one who can change my birthday, but lo and behold, after months, THEY changed my birthday back . Then wanted to charge me fees for being late on my taxes. I told them "dead men don't pay taxes".
My great Grandma had something like that happen. She was born in 1880 and appeared on the census listed under her first name and middle initial. The court house with the birth records burned the following year and without the family knowing the federal government listed her as dead. She appear on the census every ten years after that under her first initial and middle name. When she turned 65 she applied for benefits and was denied because she was "dead." Even though the census records had her listed at the same address every 10 years. It didn't get straighten out until she turned 83 and they refused to give her back benefits. So she only received them for 10 years until she passed.
Here, the Philippines, that public employee would be sued with admin complaint of negligence, or imprisoned, for violating Data Privacy Law. There should be a death certificate presented before Social Security.
I've had to deal with that. I had to help someone who's coverage ended because they were marked deceased instead of their twin brother. We got their coverage reinstated and then 6 months later Social Security ended the coverage again because they still had him marked as deceased. It was like playing whack-a-mole. They spent over a year calling places time after time getting it resolved.
That happened to me 5 years ago. Suddenly Medicare stopped paying for my medical bills to the hospitals because I was "deceased". Medicare couldn't fix it. Only The Social Security Administration could fix the situation and it took forever with both me and the hospitals hounding them!
The big problem is we use 9 digits, which have only 1 billion combinations, to represent a few hundred million people. There's no room for a check digit or the like to catch a typo.
Steve we had a friend who passed away. He had my wife as a beneficiary. The state does not want to release a death certificate with cause without a signed paper from him. The insurance company has it but guess who doesn't want to release it. Not sure how to proceed as cause of death is required on the paperwork but insurance company controls documents
That is not a common situation where a non-family member is listed as a beneficiary on insurance. Something also sounds hinky because my Social Worker relative and two friends of my now deceased parents had to do the 'final things' for friends because they had no close relatives alive anymore (last of the family). They just filed a paper to be appointed as the 'representative' of the deceased person in Estate court and the death certificate was sent to them the same day priority mail.
@ unusual sure but it was his wishes. We tried to get him to make up with his family without success and asked him not to put us as beneficiaries but he insisted. No kids, no wife and family was estranged over his excess drinking. He stopped drinking the last 6 months of his life. We continued to get him to reconnect with family.
I have a "I'm not dead yet" shirt. I got from seeing spamalot on Broadway. One should be given to everyone that has that problem. Btw i wear it on my birthday.
@Aging_Geek 0.3% of "millions" of _death reports_ are wrong, which amounts to at least 6,000 of mistakes a year, guesstimated to be more like 10,000. Nothing to do with 330M of total population.
The way to bring more attention to the problem is to not use the government small percentage number but the real number it translates too. First doesn't sound like much but the real number shocks people.
I mean it would involve all constitutional rights: free speech, right to bear arms and all that, and discrimination, contract interference, breach of contract by all previous employers and service providers, breach of international law as the client would no longer be a citizen of any country, defamation... The main isssue is that as the client is legally dead, common law courts could immediately dismiss the case since as a dead person they have no standing as they are dead. Bloody common law...
One consequence of this that may hit closer to home, is that many online accounts now claim to only sell a license to the account holder. And the license is revoked upon the account holder's death. So upon you being declared dead, your iTunes music and movie collection, your Steam games library, and Amazon Kindle book purchases all go *poof*. It's not like when you bought these things on physical media, and your next of kin inherited ownership of them upon your death. We're becoming a society where we don't own anything anymore. If we're gonna change this, we need to do it in the next few decades. Or it'll become the new norm.
I was the sole parental caregiver and when the last of my parents died, in roared scummy family who declared me dead and took everything. I lost my job, license, passport, home, everything. I was finally able to get my identity back and re-alive, but they denied my Social Security points I'd accrued by then, struggled to land work, my maiden name was given back and not my married, and worse. Meanwhile they got to buy all kinds of luxury items and houses using my parents' IDs and lived on their checks. No one prosecuted them. It was weird seeing my name on the tombstone.
I've been dead since 2016. I didn't know I was dead until during the pandemic, when one agency couldn't process money owed me unless I had SSA unlist me as dead, within 10 days. SSA gave an initial blow off, but when pressed, said a funeral home reported my SSN (which has some sequential digits, likely made up for a form by some dipshit too lazy to do his job honestly) back in 2016. That was during the pandemic. SSA has zero available audit trail to investigate the erroneous report. Their process to fix it is a Catch 22, come into their office with some documents I have, others that don't exist, except they had a long term ban on visits to said office in effect. SSA has ZERO process to take responsibility for errors, and fix them, nor for systems capable of tracking details of such errors. SSA is a reckless fraud that is overdue to shut down and eliminate. That only needs to be done once, to solve huge numbers of abuses by them.
I've heard about this a few times, what I don't get is why the undead person just doesn't go around committing crimes under the defense that you can't arrest a dead man.
What would actually happen is they would arrest you and run your ID to verify it. If it comes back as belonging to a deceased person, they will assume that you gave them a fraudulent ID and add a charge for that. Then they book you as a John Doe and hold you while they run your fingerprints. They'll be really confused when your prints match the same dead person, but will probably eventually figure out what is going on, and you will still face charges for whatever crime you committed.
This happened to me when I deployed to Honduras in January of 1987. My plane was diverted to San Salvador and I was held for 10 days. The U.S. Air Force presumed I was dead. My parents were even notified of this. Took a year to get this straightened out.
I myself personally will never walk into any law enforcement agency, trying to prove i am alive, because that could be the first step to making that report true. Remember, they are part of the same government that has already reported you as deceased, and they don't like being called liars. If you're dead, you're dead.
Happened to my SIL, someone swapped her social with her dad's when he passed on some paperwork, and she went through hell proving there was a mistake made and she was indeed, still alive.
Speak the language of the government, take them to court. Make a spectacle. It will become routine in the news or resolved. Sometimes fixing mistakes that causes harm is costly . Their mistakes should lead to recompense.
I ran into this several times when I worked as a biller in a doctor's office. We would get a denial from Medicare on the grounds that the date of service was after the patient's date of death. This was 20 to 25 years ago, as I recall. And as far as I know, the patients affected were able to straighten out there status fairly quickly.
This happened to my father-in-law a few years ago. Lost his VA and Medicare benefits during a period where he had a stroke, and the delay on getting him "brought back to life" severely impacted his recovery. The SSA couldn't give a good reason on how it happened, but the most likely reason was some funeral home director typo'd a SSN when declaring someone else deceased. They have no validation process.
I've heard of this happening and oh my lord, so many struggle to even open a savings account, and all that... I worked at a major bank and we saw this every now and then.
I know someone who had this happen to her. And due to multiple different agencies having communication issues, she’s corrected it more than once only to have her status changed to dead again every couple years.
Had a friend who reported to the Social Security Administration someone was falsely using her SSA number. Nothing was done about it. This friend eventually had a stroke and passed away. I wonder what happened to her number since then.
This happened to a friend of mine a few years ago. A bureaucratic error marked her as dead after her father died. Don't know how, since they don't even share a name, but it was a living nightmare getting it fixed!
When my mother died I called social security to change payee name on my brother's SSI benefit check. All seemed well. A few weeks later we went to get my brother an identity card at the state DMV. They informed us that he was dead. We called SS and explained it. They said we needed to bring my disabled brother down to the social security office to "resurrect" him. It shocked me that they have a procedure for this and call it "resurrect" as well. We got it straightened out but I don't know what people would do if a person was unable to come into the office due to sickness or infirmity.
I say we need a video, a part 2 thing that you could possibly getaway with during this live unalive state like could you just send in a death certificate and get rid of bills ect.
In the 1980's my mother started receiving death benefits from social security for my father. It was quite a surprise considering my father was sitting on the couch next to her when she discovered he had been declared dead. It turned out that my father and another person were somehow issued the same SS number and that person had died. My father had to produce all his income records (he was self employed at the time) so they could untangle his income from the person that had passed. It took months to straighten out.
This happened to dad once. He was deployed overseas, one of the guys sharing the house got drunk the night before. Needless to say he was very hard to wake up, he caused everyone to miss thier flight. They caught a later flight, when dad reported in he was told " The plane crashed right after takeoff, no survivers. You were presumed dead when the plane went down." Dad told them "Cool if I'm dead, then bye!", they told NOPE you reported in therefore your alive and still belong to the military. He had to call home and tell his mom "You will be getting a telegram saying I'm dead and obviously I'm not".
I used to work next to a telecoms billing call center. One of the more discussed 'exciting' calls they had was for the 'deceased caller' who wanted his service turned back on. They didn't just take the word of some voice over the phone that so-n-so wasn't actually dead, but despite that apparently the calls could drag on.
Always makes me crazy when some agency says "Oh, it's only a very tiny percentage of the time when we completely destroy somebody's life with no recourse!"
I am now retired in the UK. I used to work in IT support, which meant my desk normally was in accounts. One Company I worked for, had 3 people using the same social security number, and they did not mind.
I hope someone took advantage of this and got paid a life insurance policy.😂😂 Also, a dead person cant go to jail. So i wouldn't have to pay for anything ever again!
Burns was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was then transferred to a better hospital where doctors upgraded his condition to alive.
All she has to do is stop paying taxes....it'll be straightened out in no time
Or at least they might discover how many other people have been using her SSN and/or identity.
Right, not the first dime until it's fixed.
Imagine all the elections that you could vote in if the government declares you dead.😂😂😂
Or try to collect her life insurance.
Obviously you are not familiar with the IRS.
When the issue was corrected, the insurance raised rates because she had a pre-existing death condition.
Great , I had to see that while drinking a gulp
Died due to a typo? What a way to go.
Puts a whole new spin on the term "keyboard warrior," doesn't it?
😂
Deathnote Lite 😂😂😂😂😂
What is the death rate by percentage that are actually alive.. So that is about 30 in 1,000,000 . Way more often than it should.
@@mikecrooks8085 It Should be less, But considering it’s probably usually human error it’s not bad!
It took my mom almost a decade to get proven alive by the federal government. When she died, though, they stopped her social security check THE NEXT DAY
I’ve heard of grieving families being billed by the government because their loved one passed a few minutes before midnight on the day before their check drops. Government be all “yeah she gets paid on the 3rd but she died at 11:56pm on the coroners report so you owe us all that money back.
@@backwoodstherapy believe it or not, SS can back charge that last check and make it disappear from the bank account. Had it happen when my mother passed away.
Does Hertz run the government? Feels like there's the same amount of attention to detail.
That's a very good question.
The true conspiracy.
The government is the original hertz
Trump is upping the ante. You wouldn't believe the amount of chaos going on right now caused by these Executive Orders not having been thought through or coming without implementation guidance. It's making Hertz look like they have their act together.
yes they do.
Funny enough, it's easier to be proven dead than it is to be proven alive.
Unless you're trying to tie up loose ends like mortgages, car loans, etc.
*_Funnily_*_ enough,_ though. You wouldn't say, _he was funny proven alive._ "Funny" is an adjective; while _funnily_ is the adverb that you're looking for.
That's a hint.
"Got ID to prove who you are"
Yes, here's my drivers license, social security card & passport.
"Those are invalid, as they were issued to someone who is now deceased"...
Why is it that a relative can identify a body to confirm that they're dead, but can't identify a person to confirm that they're alive?
Would provably be abused unfortunately
Woman: "I'm not dead"
Govt: "you're not fooling anybody."
Woman: "I think I'll go for a walk.."
When's your next round?
I can't take her like that, it's against regulation
I don't want to go on the cart!
I feel happy!
😂😂😂
Watch out for the double whammy! A friend did not receive her SS payment. When she called the local SS office, she was told she was dead. Told she needed to go to the Regional office (Washington DC). Was told there that the local office needed to handle this. Finally straightened out, BUT then received notice her life insurance was cancelled because she was dead. It would be paid out on proof via death certificate. Wrote a letter to insurance. Next week got another letter from SS. OOPS! she was dead AGAIN! Reported by insurance company.
How frustrating
Second one should result in a lawsuit against the SS for gross negligence; after one bogus death report the next one should be silently discarded without a date of death after the time last observed alive. You don't reject the record as that will encourage putting in a date until it gets accepted, rather you treat the original report as valid but the person was resurrected.
Sue the insurance company, and report them for filing false government documents.
This happened to my mother. We went to the SS office after her husband died, and the woman behind the desk informed her that she was; in fact, dead. She went to some lengths to convince my mom that she was not alive despite her sitting there arguing with the clerk.
It took some doing to get it sorted out.
This should not happen but as someone who has little contact with the outside world as someone without a job or a close friend circle? Yeah, I'm terrified of this happening to me and I am only 44 years old.
"how does it feel, losing an argument with a dead woman?"
Canadian. A friend of mine was declared dead by his ex spouse. Bank canceled cards and froze bank account. He almost lost his home because he could not pay his mortgage. His insurance went up as he was then deemed as a new driver. It took 6 months for him to straighten out every thing. Had to get new ID, medical card, ect.
How much trouble did she get n for that?
What was the electroconvulsive therapy for?
@@aaronpark3987dude that’s hilarious.
@@Bozar069 Consequences for a woman? What is this? The middle east?
She needed a copy of his death certificate!
My mom was declared dead a few years ago. After 6 months of trying to get the issue fixed, the only thing that helped was getting the local news involved. Then she actually got some help.
My family went through this. When my grandfather passsed away, somehow my grandmother was also declared dead. It was several months before we could get it resolved. Meanwhile she couldn't afford her medication because she no longer had Medicare and almost lost her house because she was no longer getting Social Security.
I wonder if the IRS would think differently at tax time.
Steve mentioned she was given some sort “dead” tax bracket, sounds like she is still paying taxes ….
They make separate judgements. What a court says isn't always what they say. And they have their own enforcement arm. So... at least taxes are certain....
No probably they were probably try to sell off that woman's property or houses and stuff if they thought she was dead and she owed money
@@popenieafantome9527 Yes, when you die, a family member is expected to file your last tax return. I wonder what happens if you have no family.
@@popenieafantome9527 If someone dies during the year their executor will file a return for the person who has died. So yes a return still have to be filed for someone who has died.
Happened to me when I was 18. Social Security had someone who typed my number instead of someone else. Bank cancelled my account, couldn’t attend college. Couldn’t get a credit card. Had to pay for my car cash. Had to pay for my school cash. Had to pay for my house cash. Went to court and was declared alive. Social security wouldn’t take it. Finally the federal court ordered the local social security administrator to appear before him and discuss, under pain of contempt, why they wouldn’t correct my records. Before the hearing, my records were corrected. I still couldn’t get a credit card until I was 50. The credit reporting bureaus still said I was dead after more than thirty years. GIGO.
It happened to me in 2022, and I'm still dealing with the aftermath, even though I was able to get Social Security to correct it within weeks. (IRS wouldn't accept my 2024 tax return. They did however cash the check. And they did accept 2023(?)) Discover and American Express froze credit cards; AE were real a**holes about restoring theirs, although of course they accepted payments of balances. Medical insurances were canceled, and one of them dropped my wife when reinstating. I can see how a person with less resources than I could be seriously harmed, even killed for real.
My dad had the opposite. He died when I was 12 and more then a year after his death a tax collector came to our house asking where he was. I sent him to the graveyard two streets away without telling him he died. " Through the gates, last isle to the left, about halfway on your left is where he is now" he came back 20min later and apologized profusely, but it took another year before the tax office got the memo and stopped bothering my mom.
This actually happened to one of my patients and they cancelled his medicare and social security check. He went to the local SSI office and raised hell 😅😅 In his case someone with the same first and last name died
I went to make a medical appt. with my large HMO (starts with K) but couldn't because my membership was inactive due to my "death". Another member of the HMO with a similar name had died and I was declared un-alive. To the HMO's credit they had everything straightened out within 48 hours after I made some phone calls.
That's why you should always have credit cards and loans. Tell them you are dead and tell them why and they will prove that you are alive.
When she is alive again, the insurance company is going to deny her claims as not being an enrolled member, so she will still be on the hook for her health care during that time.
My work accidentally cancelled my insurance (even though I got charged for it). They had issued new cards (new policy) and cancelled the old one. Fixed the glitch by cancelling the new one (without reinstating the old one). Never told me - found out at the hospital. When I went to my Benefits person at work I had to prove (paystub) I paid for insurance.
Six weeks for them to figure it out and fix it (reinstated the old policy). Then fun getting all the claims fixed. When I resubmitted they were immediately declined because they had already been declined (for no policy). Then had to go back and get help to get that all fixed as well. Then they charged fees because it was not direct billed. So I had to go again and get that fixed as well (I had paid cash so the hospital/doctor did not refile claims). I think it was a total of 6 months before it was all complete and I was reimbursed.
My ex wife was also reported as dead. When trying to fix it nobody would admit who reported her that way.
It happened to my Husband about 6 years ago. We are still suffering the repercussions of their mistake. They gave us 10 years of free credit monitoring.
Slipped into a "comma" and never returned
Adds another whole dimension to the term "GOING OFF GRID".
When my wife died, I went to the credit union to get a credit card in my own name, because they canceled our existing card. They turned me down because I was listed as dead by the credit reporting agency. I had to get the original reporting company to withdraw their report, but the agency would not tell me who that was. I disputed, and that worked. Turns out it was the credit union itself who reported both of us dead. They never apologized, but they did withdraw the report.
Geez. Vulgarity in all institutions. Glad you’re back from the dead though.
This is why my wife and I have our own separate bank accounts.
Anybody starting to realize that requiring a SSN for everything was a stupid idea?
It was never meant to be used like this. Even the statute says so. But like most things the government does, once the worm is out of the can, hard to get it back in.
The Social Security website itself says: "Organizations should avoid using Social Security numbers (SSNs) as identifiers for any type of transaction." That's part of the problem. The government refuses to make SSNs and SS cards secure because "nobody should be using SSNs as an identifier."
The whole thing needs to be replaced with some sort of private/public key system. The holder of the private key is the only one able to encrypt messages which can be decrypted by the public key. So you give them a random message, they encode it, you decode it with their public key, confirm it matches the random message you gave them, and that confirms they're the person the public key belongs to.
@@solandri69 I remember when I was in the Army (70's -90's) they used your social security for EVERYTHING. and I do mean everything. Some states used your social security number as your drivers license number. It seemed that every piece of paper in the army had a social security release statement attached telling you that you don't have to put your social security number on the form, but if you do everything you do will be null and void.
Thing is, before the All volunteer Army in the 70's everyone were issued service numbers that had nothing to do with social security numbers. I am not sure how they do it now, but I think they went back to issuing service numbers.
Legally it can only be used for social security.
@@nolongeramused8135 Kind of, No one can FORCE you to use your social security number for identification. However that does not stop it from being done. And the IRS specifically uses your social security number as your TAX ID number. (Businesses get tax id for taxation purposes that use the exact same number of digits used by social security but in a different format instead of xxx-xx-xxxx they use xx-xxxxxxxx.
This is the thing that freaks me out when people start talking about the state of immigration in the U.S. The difference between being a citizen and not a citizen is some paperwork. That's it! All of us are only ever a few keystrokes away from having a very bad day!
The Net
If the SSA "unalived" 10,000 of its employees a year arbitrarily, by internal process or with external help, would that be a trivial number to them?
What if they had treble damages on that count imposed, for fraud and malice?
and then once you do prove that you are alive still, they will want all of your back taxes immediately.
You’d think that they’d have a better procedure for undoing an error when they have to do it 10,000 times a year.
I had something similar happen to me when I was about 22. At some point Social Security changed my birthday. It took me a long time to even figure out why I was having so many issues until someone suggested I check with the SS office. Sure enough, my birth date was change from the month of Nov. to the month of July. The struggle to get it changed back was brutal. I *think* it was changed when my sister died (her birthday was in July). It was years before I could get it straightened out and suffered some of the same heartaches mentioned here. I remember one agent telling me that they could not simply just change it, there was a long process. My response was "Well some 'just' changed it a few years ago!" It was very painful.
The real question is, can she still vote?
Only in Chicago
For Democrats.
@@tomc101I disagree. It's not *just* in Chicago... Sometimes multiple places in the same election...
@@tomc101 AND, you can then vote many times! Those old enough to remember Richard J Daley sr, he was always getting votes from cemeteries! Of course when it was investigated, the elections board found no wrongdoing!
Apparently so because most states do not require voter ID... and you can't be purged from the voter rolls for skipping numerous elections. Interesting fact: Of Kammy Harris's 19 states that she won, 18 of those do not require voter ID.
Perhaps a multi-million dollar suit against the social security department would resolve the issue faster. The mistake cost the victim lots of money.
Sue the government? Hahaha! good luck doing that!
As the infant son of a veteran, I was declared to never have been born by the VA. It took a certfied copy of my birth certificate to prove I exist.
I was naturalized in Michigan when I was 4 yo. When I went to college in California, they suggested I change my name (very common first and last names) to include my native name so I'd be less likely to be confused with others. That seemed like a good idea, so I visited the Social Security Administration and filled out a name change request form. This was in the late 1980s. They had to request the office in Michigan, which had the original copy of my naturalization papers, mail it over to them in California. Apparently my copy was not good enough. They needed the copy the government kept for itself.
@@solandri69 Your copy should have been more than good enough because it is IDENTICAL to the other copy other than the words "For the individual" or something equivalent on it.
@@christopherkidwell9817 It's not whose copy; they want a chain of custody.
@ They don't need a chain of custody. As long as they can verify the information on the copy is VALID (which they should be able to do with a simple phone call or even access to a website today), that's all they need.
@@christopherkidwell9817 That's what they told me they had to do, so that's what I waited for. If there's one thing I've found, it's that government workers frequently don't know the "correct" way to do things. And often do it whatever way they think it should be done. In the end I got my name changed and a new SS card.
Simple, dead people dont have to follow the rules. You dont have to go to work. You dont have to pay for anything like parking. Once they realise that you are costing them so much money, they will quickly revive you.
Yeah, and if they wanted to evict, they would have to call ghost busters.
After being dead for 7 years, my neighbors brother showed up. Seems he moved, so mail from the governemen, Social Security etc, was returned. They declared him dead from a returened letter.
As a retired person. If this were to happen to me it would be VERY troublesome. My pension(s) would stop, m Social Security would stop, my health care (Medicare) would stop. My bank accounts would be locked. Of course your credit cards stop working, and you can no longer pay your bills. You also cannot vote, and since you are a non person you lose all of your civil rights.
How do you go prove that your alive? Do you get a doctors note? Then what do you do? the paperwork mountain would be tremendous. And I bet that just after you get everything taken care of you will have a heart attack from all the stress!
They should just all sue the government. They need to claim all the financial amounts X5. The Govt would soon sort out the problems.
Ben is hiding behind the Viper.
Who cares ffs
@@RyGuyxxyy Some of us like to play Steve's game, So a lot of us do!
Happened to me last year. Went into SSA office with a name change I had gotten after my estranged husband's death. 2 days later tried to get a new drivers license and, no, we can't, SSA says you are dead. Went back to the SSA office and told them and they explained the process "takes a few days". In my case, about 10, so I'm feeling very fortunate after reading some of these experiences. During that time, my bank account was frozen, my social security check was rescinded, and I was without health insurance. But the social security card with the name change came in the mail!
Yeah, no kidding. They altered my birthdate at the IRS, said I don't exist, and declared me dead. They told me I am the only one who can change my birthday, but lo and behold, after months, THEY changed my birthday back . Then wanted to charge me fees for being late on my taxes. I told them "dead men don't pay taxes".
So this is how it starts: the undead apocalypse.
👍😉
"If I'm dead, I don't owe taxes."
_Government instantly reverts decision..._
Try getting a job and not pay any taxes. IRS will then declare that you are alive so that taxes may be collected
Did you miss the part of the video about people getting fired from their new job as soon as they had trouble paying them?
SOUNDS LIKE A SHOPPING SPREE,.. or an amazing insurance scam 😂
.... sorry officer, you have the wrong corpse
Stop paying taxes, if they think your dead. They'll prove your alive pretty quick
Or they'll just take everything since you're dead.
This explains Jerry Garcia's faithful followers
My great Grandma had something like that happen. She was born in 1880 and appeared on the census listed under her first name and middle initial. The court house with the birth records burned the following year and without the family knowing the federal government listed her as dead. She appear on the census every ten years after that under her first initial and middle name. When she turned 65 she applied for benefits and was denied because she was "dead." Even though the census records had her listed at the same address every 10 years. It didn't get straighten out until she turned 83 and they refused to give her back benefits. So she only received them for 10 years until she passed.
I have this happened twice now . Once in FLA & 20 years later in IN.
Here, the Philippines, that public employee would be sued with admin complaint of negligence, or imprisoned, for violating Data Privacy Law.
There should be a death certificate presented before Social Security.
I've had to deal with that. I had to help someone who's coverage ended because they were marked deceased instead of their twin brother. We got their coverage reinstated and then 6 months later Social Security ended the coverage again because they still had him marked as deceased. It was like playing whack-a-mole. They spent over a year calling places time after time getting it resolved.
TWO MONTHS? I can't believe she got it corrected that fast.
That happened to me 5 years ago.
Suddenly Medicare stopped paying for my medical bills to the hospitals because I was "deceased".
Medicare couldn't fix it.
Only The Social Security Administration could fix the situation and it took forever with both me and the hospitals hounding them!
The big problem is we use 9 digits, which have only 1 billion combinations, to represent a few hundred million people. There's no room for a check digit or the like to catch a typo.
They should have to key in the date of birth as well in order to get a match.
Ben checking air pressure on the red car.
Who cares
@@RyGuyxxyy It's the game here. There are other channels if this bothers you.
@@RyGuyxxyy I guess this vexes you. Some of us enjoy the Benjamin that wonders around the set.
Steve we had a friend who passed away. He had my wife as a beneficiary. The state does not want to release a death certificate with cause without a signed paper from him. The insurance company has it but guess who doesn't want to release it. Not sure how to proceed as cause of death is required on the paperwork but insurance company controls documents
That is not a common situation where a non-family member is listed as a beneficiary on insurance.
Something also sounds hinky because my Social Worker relative and two friends of my now deceased parents had to do the 'final things' for friends because they had no close relatives alive anymore (last of the family).
They just filed a paper to be appointed as the 'representative' of the deceased person in Estate court and the death certificate was sent to them the same day priority mail.
@ unusual sure but it was his wishes. We tried to get him to make up with his family without success and asked him not to put us as beneficiaries but he insisted. No kids, no wife and family was estranged over his excess drinking. He stopped drinking the last 6 months of his life. We continued to get him to reconnect with family.
Couldn’t they check the foot prints on the birth certificate?
Ben - Aside red Viper.
I have a "I'm not dead yet" shirt. I got from seeing spamalot on Broadway. One should be given to everyone that has that problem.
Btw i wear it on my birthday.
330M people in the US. 1/3 of one percent would be about a million people. Doesn't sound so insignificant when you put it that way does it?
About 3 million deaths per year in the USA, for the last couple of years. 1/3 of 1% of that is 10,000 that are incorrectly recorded as dead.
didn't steve mean 1/3 of 1% of 10,000 deaths to be the numbers?
@Aging_Geek 0.3% of "millions" of _death reports_ are wrong, which amounts to at least 6,000 of mistakes a year, guesstimated to be more like 10,000. Nothing to do with 330M of total population.
The way to bring more attention to the problem is to not use the government small percentage number but the real number it translates too. First doesn't sound like much but the real number shocks people.
I wonder how much money a lawyer could make, suing the government on behalf of the legally dead.
I mean it would involve all constitutional rights: free speech, right to bear arms and all that, and discrimination, contract interference, breach of contract by all previous employers and service providers, breach of international law as the client would no longer be a citizen of any country, defamation...
The main isssue is that as the client is legally dead, common law courts could immediately dismiss the case since as a dead person they have no standing as they are dead.
Bloody common law...
One consequence of this that may hit closer to home, is that many online accounts now claim to only sell a license to the account holder. And the license is revoked upon the account holder's death. So upon you being declared dead, your iTunes music and movie collection, your Steam games library, and Amazon Kindle book purchases all go *poof*. It's not like when you bought these things on physical media, and your next of kin inherited ownership of them upon your death.
We're becoming a society where we don't own anything anymore. If we're gonna change this, we need to do it in the next few decades. Or it'll become the new norm.
We definitely need to change it. Right to Repair is a good start. Shortening the copyright length is another good way.
if a "dead person" commits crime can they still be put in jail?
I don't want to go on the cart!
Here before the update to the story where her husband gets charged with necrophilia by bumbling local cops.
I was the sole parental caregiver and when the last of my parents died, in roared scummy family who declared me dead and took everything. I lost my job, license, passport, home, everything. I was finally able to get my identity back and re-alive, but they denied my Social Security points I'd accrued by then, struggled to land work, my maiden name was given back and not my married, and worse. Meanwhile they got to buy all kinds of luxury items and houses using my parents' IDs and lived on their checks. No one prosecuted them. It was weird seeing my name on the tombstone.
Did you tell the police? The local prosecutor would have LOVED to have had that case.
Her Life Insurance should be paying her.
Beneficiary.
She should go to them and use the full power of their legal team to prove her alive so they don't have to pay.
Then she'll be alive again
I've been dead since 2016.
I didn't know I was dead until during the pandemic, when one agency couldn't process money owed me unless I had SSA unlist me as dead, within 10 days.
SSA gave an initial blow off, but when pressed, said a funeral home reported my SSN (which has some sequential digits, likely made up for a form by some dipshit too lazy to do his job honestly) back in 2016.
That was during the pandemic. SSA has zero available audit trail to investigate the erroneous report. Their process to fix it is a Catch 22, come into their office with some documents I have, others that don't exist, except they had a long term ban on visits to said office in effect.
SSA has ZERO process to take responsibility for errors, and fix them, nor for systems capable of tracking details of such errors.
SSA is a reckless fraud that is overdue to shut down and eliminate. That only needs to be done once, to solve huge numbers of abuses by them.
You should be able to sue them for lost productivity and psychological suffering.
I've heard about this a few times, what I don't get is why the undead person just doesn't go around committing crimes under the defense that you can't arrest a dead man.
But remember that police arrest first and if you're lucky...ask questions later...
What would actually happen is they would arrest you and run your ID to verify it. If it comes back as belonging to a deceased person, they will assume that you gave them a fraudulent ID and add a charge for that. Then they book you as a John Doe and hold you while they run your fingerprints. They'll be really confused when your prints match the same dead person, but will probably eventually figure out what is going on, and you will still face charges for whatever crime you committed.
In the All in the Family episode titled "Archie and the Computer", Archie is mistakenly declared dead by the Veterans Administration.
This happened to me when I deployed to Honduras in January of 1987. My plane was diverted to San Salvador and I was held for 10 days. The
U.S. Air Force presumed I was dead. My parents were even notified of this. Took a year to get this straightened out.
Best advice I can give is to go to your local PD or Sheriff Office and get Fingerprints taken, so you are In The System.
I myself personally will never walk into any law enforcement agency, trying to prove i am alive, because that could be the first step to making that report true. Remember, they are part of the same government that has already reported you as deceased, and they don't like being called liars. If you're dead, you're dead.
I imagine they still find a way to tax you!😂
I had to file taxes for my Dad after he died. Just being dead isn’t an excuse to not pay taxes.
I saw this in the military and it was hell for the guy to get it back on track. I think it took him over a year to sort it all out.
Happened to my SIL, someone swapped her social with her dad's when he passed on some paperwork, and she went through hell proving there was a mistake made and she was indeed, still alive.
Speak the language of the government, take them to court. Make a spectacle.
It will become routine in the news or resolved.
Sometimes fixing mistakes that causes harm is costly .
Their mistakes should lead to recompense.
except you can only take the government to court if they allow you to.
@ shucks! Now what?
@ you could try storming the capital? I hear they just give out pardons for treason now :)
I ran into this several times when I worked as a biller in a doctor's office. We would get a denial from Medicare on the grounds that the date of service was after the patient's date of death. This was 20 to 25 years ago, as I recall. And as far as I know, the patients affected were able to straighten out there status fairly quickly.
My son and one other was born at same hospital on same day. Both were given exact same name. Was a nightmare for my son.
You should defintely receive an exemption from taxes for at least 12 months after the government declares you dead.
For life.
She's pining for the fjords....
Joined the choir invisible?
This happened to my father-in-law a few years ago. Lost his VA and Medicare benefits during a period where he had a stroke, and the delay on getting him "brought back to life" severely impacted his recovery. The SSA couldn't give a good reason on how it happened, but the most likely reason was some funeral home director typo'd a SSN when declaring someone else deceased. They have no validation process.
I've heard of this happening and oh my lord, so many struggle to even open a savings account, and all that... I worked at a major bank and we saw this every now and then.
I know someone who had this happen to her. And due to multiple different agencies having communication issues, she’s corrected it more than once only to have her status changed to dead again every couple years.
Leave it to the government to argue so vigorously to deny the blatantly obvious
Absolutely true, VA worker typed in a SS number wrong and it just happened to be my father's number. Took 3 months to fix
Had a friend who reported to the Social Security Administration someone was falsely using her SSA number. Nothing was done about it. This friend eventually had a stroke and passed away. I wonder what happened to her number since then.
A friend had the same problem, and the others claimed exempt, so they were after him for their taxes.
@jilbertb my friend was way past retirement age. So she wasn't working but someone using her SSN clearly was.
This happened to a friend of mine a few years ago. A bureaucratic error marked her as dead after her father died. Don't know how, since they don't even share a name, but it was a living nightmare getting it fixed!
When my mother died I called social security to change payee name on my brother's SSI benefit check. All seemed well. A few weeks later we went to get my brother an identity card at the state DMV. They informed us that he was dead.
We called SS and explained it. They said we needed to bring my disabled brother down to the social security office to "resurrect" him. It shocked me that they have a procedure for this and call it "resurrect" as well.
We got it straightened out but I don't know what people would do if a person was unable to come into the office due to sickness or infirmity.
Dead Parrot sketch is from Monty Python 1969
I say we need a video, a part 2 thing that you could possibly getaway with during this live unalive state like could you just send in a death certificate and get rid of bills ect.
What about traffic tickets
In the 1980's my mother started receiving death benefits from social security for my father. It was quite a surprise considering my father was sitting on the couch next to her when she discovered he had been declared dead. It turned out that my father and another person were somehow issued the same SS number and that person had died. My father had to produce all his income records (he was self employed at the time) so they could untangle his income from the person that had passed. It took months to straighten out.
You are the king of PUNS in this episode!
This happened to dad once. He was deployed overseas, one of the guys sharing the house got drunk the night before. Needless to say he was very hard to wake up, he caused everyone to miss thier flight. They caught a later flight, when dad reported in he was told " The plane crashed right after takeoff, no survivers. You were presumed dead when the plane went down." Dad told them "Cool if I'm dead, then bye!", they told NOPE you reported in therefore your alive and still belong to the military. He had to call home and tell his mom "You will be getting a telegram saying I'm dead and obviously I'm not".
I used to work next to a telecoms billing call center.
One of the more discussed 'exciting' calls they had was for the 'deceased caller' who wanted his service turned back on.
They didn't just take the word of some voice over the phone that so-n-so wasn't actually dead, but despite that apparently the calls could drag on.
That DEC endorsement on mail can really mess someone up.
Always makes me crazy when some agency says "Oh, it's only a very tiny percentage of the time when we completely destroy somebody's life with no recourse!"
I am now retired in the UK. I used to work in IT support, which meant my desk normally was in accounts. One Company I worked for, had 3 people using the same social security number, and they did not mind.
I hope someone took advantage of this and got paid a life insurance policy.😂😂
Also, a dead person cant go to jail. So i wouldn't have to pay for anything ever again!
Burns was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was then transferred to a better hospital where doctors upgraded his condition to alive.