I have no idea. Over in P220s back yard a guy went "missing' a while back. He's an elderly guy as I understand it. We drive by his house about weekly and his truck has moved, but I assume its his son driving it.

So what happens to his SS payments. I assume its being direct deposited to his checking. While everyone assumes he's dead, legally he's still alive and it'll be 7 full years till he can be declared dead. What about his truck payments, assuming he had a loan?

Don't know about the SSI payments, but if he's dead and there was a loan, then his estate is responsible for the remainder of the loan and the truck can still be repo'ed.

I do not know the answer to your question regarding SS payments.

I suspect you are referring to George?

I did not know him, but know 4 people who do/did know him.

Very sad case, I do hope it has a favorable ending, but every day I believe the chances diminish.

From what I know, if the guy has automatic deposit into his account, and is questionably available, whoever has access to his/her account will be responsible to reimburse the SSA if the person is deceased.

Before spending anything, call your local SSA District Office and let them know the particulars.

An interesting question and I have sometimes wondered if there were any mechanisms in place to confirm that a recipient of various programs was even still alive.

Near the end of my career in Army CID offices around the country were tasked with contacting a list of elderly retirees to confirm just that. Agents were required to contact the individuals face to face, and in one case that turned into a bit of a struggle. A caregiver for one man was extremely suspicious of who I was and why I wanted to see the man, believing that I might be an imposter bent on scamming him in some way. Although I normally wore civilian clothing on duty, for that meeting I wore my uniform and presented both my credentials and military ID card for examination.

I didn't even know his name was George. But yes, and his cars are still sitting parked where they have been for a while. The truck in question seems to be a later model, and its why I wondered about the payments if any.

I just saw this today about a guy who laid dead on his kitchen floor for 3 years.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...y-kitchen-floor.html

There are computer systems used by fraud units in municipalities which cross-reference other systems. For example, if an individual is reported as deceased to a credit agency or a government agency like the IRS, then it would appear as an exception on other government systems.

Fed 161, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

Who is George? A member here?

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:
Who is George? A member here?

No, just a guy that had a nice "camp" along the river. There are a few others, but his was about the nicest. It attracted a bunch of local attention when he went missing earlier. No comment intended as to his character, and I started the thread because my wife asked about his SS. He may not even have been old enough to claim yet. We noticed his truck parked back where it always was as we passed by the camp today.

I went through this a year ago. The JP did the death certificate and SSA got notified immediately. Before you could blink SSA reversed the most recent direct deposit.

SSA gets death notices from a variety of sources. The obvious one is next of kin reports to SSA. A hospitalized individual on medicare who dies will be reported as deceased to medicare by the hospital and the data passes on to SSA. SSA gets death info from DOD and state bureau of vital statistics offices. There are a number of other sources where we get death data as well, including funeral homes and other sources. So SSA may already know about the death.

But it certainly wouldn't be the first time that SSA never learns of a death and some sleazy relative has access to the bank account where the checks continue to be deposited after the death.

I used to do face to face home visits on elderly individuals to insure they were not deceased. 95 years old plus and other criteria are used. One way to catch this is to run medicare non-usage against the beneficiary rolls. If a guy is, say 87 years old and hasn't used medicare in 5 years, there is a fairly high likelihood they might be dead. So we check those out.

So SSA may already know the guy is dead. If there is a genuine suspicion that the guy is deceased, you could ask the local police to do a wellness check on the guy. If you were to contact SSA with just a suspicion that the guy is missing and might be dead (and the checks are still going out), SSA could contact the guy to just verify that we have the correct address. If there is no response, SSA can suspend the checks (not terminate the benefits or input a death, but just suspend the checks.) Beneficiaries are required to simply verify that SSA has the correct address. If they don't respond, we can suspend the checks for a bad address.

quote:

Originally posted by odin:
From what I know, if the guy has automatic deposit into his account, and is questionably available, whoever has access to his/her account will be responsible to reimburse the SSA if the person is deceased.

They will be more than responsible. They will get locked up. SSA criminally prosecutes people who knowingly access the funds of a deceased individual who remains in payment status and the perp accesses their funds. Been involved in preparing a case for prosecution for the US Attorney myself.

(larry the cable guy voice on...) I BELIEVE... (voice off).. he aint dead fer 7 years and that dont start 'til somebody starts a missing persons report.

The guy in question here (George) isn't confirmed as dead. Just missing. The local authorities suspect foul play, or at least that's how its been reported by the media (which could mean about anything).

I wouldn't be snitching to SSA based on speculation. You don't know he's dead, you don't know his payments are missing, and you don't know if anyone took them.

quote:

Originally posted by armadill0:
I went through this a year ago. The JP did the death certificate and SSA got notified immediately. Before you could blink SSA reversed the most recent direct deposit.

The exact same thing happened when my mom passed away. She wasn't gone a week and SSI had already recalled her last payment.

SS usually gets taken care of by various sources. The deceased is reported somewhere and adjudicated. The bigger problem could then be if he is just AWAY and gets declared erroneously:

https://www.fox4now.com/news/n...-dead-im-still-alive