SSA Overpayments

These are instances in which SSA says they have paid you Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits that they were not supposed to. They are now seeking to have you repay them those overpaid benefits. If you receive a notice from the SSA that they have overpaid you, there are only two courses of action.

The first is to challenge whether or not you were actually overpaid. In rare instances, SSA makes a mistake and you don’t actually owe them the money. In most instances, though, you have in fact been overpaid. When you file a claim for Social Security benefits, they alert you very clearly at several stages throughout the Application and appeal process that you will need to notify SSA if your medical condition improves, or you return to work, even Part Time. The burden is on you to tell them, not on them to hopefully catch the error.

Claimants are reminded of this obligation again when they are awarded benefits. Once you’ve been approved, you’re no longer considered a Claimant. You are now deemed an SSA Beneficiary. The rules are different for Claimant’s and Beneficiaries. Many of our would-be Clients don’t realize that the overpayment actually is their fault because they returned to work and continued to accept ongoing SSD payments.

The second course of action is to seek a waiver of your overpayment. If you seek a waiver, you are admitting to the Agency that you were in fact overpaid but you’re asking them to forgive that balance due.

In order to successfully seek a waiver of an overpayment, you first have to prove that the overpayment was not caused by any fault of your own (as explained above). This is hard to do and rarely the case, because many people knowingly continue to get Social Security checks after they have returned to work. Telling the Agency that you didn’t know won’t be enough. You signed documentation agreeing to notify them if you return to work.

The second step of obtaining an overpayment waiver from SSA is you must demonstrate that if the Agency forces you to repay that money, you would be left in dire straits and destitute. These questions are often resolved at the ALJ level. You have to provide copies of your monthly expenses, income, etc. This is not a fun thing to do.

If you’re a former client of ours and you’re about to return to work, we ask that you notify us in advance and work in coordination with us so that SSA doesn’t overpay you. We often return overpaid SSA funds to our local Field Office and get receipts. At SSLG, our client service goes beyond successful representation.