Wisconsin: 3 relatives suspected of cashing dead mother's Social Security checks for 30 years

ap ^ | 9-24-12 | Dinesh Ramde

[PapaBear3625]

Makes me more sure that ever that they don’t ever do an administrative audit. They need to scrap the current data base and make everyone sign up again in person with proof of identity and citizenship. Also seems to me that direct deposit to a bank account bearing only that person’s name would alleviate some of this.

No it wouldn't. For the last decade of my mom's life, I handled all her bill paying. I signed her checks. I had the debit card and the PIN and withdrew cash for her.

One thing that might work is to send each SS recipient a notice by registered mail, wherein the recipient must sign for it and show ID to the postman before getting it. If undeliverable, the SS checks are suspended until it's sorted out.

[wiggen]

The guy is smiling while being booked. Its got to be the most fun he’s had in 25 years.

[Grams A]

You would also think death records w/b cross referenced.”

You would think so - but what if no one reports the death to the proper agencies?

Having worked with data files for longer than I want to think about, there are probably already so many patches and updates to information in the SS system that it has lost all its credibility. Really needs to be scraped and set up with safeguards to ensure that the information as entered and when revised is correct.

Re payment of bills and handling financial affairs for an elderly or disabled person, I do have some clients that I do that for and have done that for relatives. But I always had a court issued document authorizing me to serve as administrator and the checking account includes that designation. That way all parties have some protection.