I have not seen any statistics to support this, but over the past few weeks, I have received a number of emails from SSDI and SSI claimants who have received letters from Social Security about a possible overpayment, or whose checks are actually being reduced to repay an overpayment.

Overpayments happen when an approved SSI or SSDI claimant attempts to work and posts earnings over applicable limits. In other cases, SSA determines that it miscalculated a claimant’s benefits and now wants to be paid back for their mistake.
Sometimes the overpayment amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. This can create a real hardship on disabled individuals. I discussed this issue on Episode 7 of ssdRadio.com
If you receive an overpayment notice, you have two options:

1) you can challenge the determination by filing a request for reconsideration of overpayment; and/or

2) you can request a waiver of overpayment because of family circumstances

If you do not ask for reconsideration in a timely manner (60 days), you lose your right to appeal on the merits and you are left with asking for a waiver.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has had to deal with this overpayment issue, whether successfully or not.

–Jonathan

[tags] overpayment of Social Security benefits, reconsideration of overpayment, SSA-632-BK, SSA-561-U2 [/tags]