Hello... My husband's monthly benefit has not been received for 2 months. When he called SSA, he was told that it was because he had an overpayment, due to also working. He never received a letter notifying of this. This was verified by SSA (national and local). There is no letter on file. He wants to pay back the overpayment but cannot do so without a REMITTANCE ID, which was to be shown on the letter that he NEVER received, and SSA confirmed, one was never sent, yet they stopped his payments, without ANY notice. Our local SSA said he needed to contact the national SSA. Once there, they told him he needed to contact his local SSA. We are going in circles and cannot get this resolved, and in the meantime, no payments. Do you have a suggestion on how to proceed? This has been extremely frustrating and emotional. Thank you!

Hi. I assume that you aren't contesting the facts or amount of your husband's overpayment. If you were, you could file an appeal request (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10058.pdf). Or, if you agreed that your husband was overpaid but the overpayment wasn't his fault and you couldn't afford to repay the overpayment you could file a request for waiver of the overpayment (https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-632.html).

I wasn't aware that a remittance ID number was required to be able to repay an overpayment. When I worked for Social Security, overpayment remittances submitted to a local office could be input to the computer system and credited toward the overpayment. Maybe it's different now.

One things certain, all Social Security offices, both local and national, have the same computer access to a person's records. So, employees at the national 800 number shouldn't be telling you that you have to deal with your local office, and your local office shouldn't be telling you to contact a national office. Social Security does have a computer database containing copies of notices sent to claimants, and if the overpayment notice that you should have received was generated then any properly trained Social Security employee should be able to generate a copy of the notice. If no notice was ever created, though, then there's no way that you're going to get a remittance ID number.

You could try submitting repayment to your local office without an ID number with a note or cover letter explaining that you're repaying an overpayment and giving them your husband's account number, which is likely just his Social Security number with the letter 'A' following. However, if the local office doesn't (or can't) properly credit the repayment to your husband's account on their computers then his monthly payments may not get reinstated timely, which would only add to your frustration.

I wish I had a good answer for you, but I'm not sure how best to solve your problem. If you do nothing and allow the overpayment to be withheld from your husband's benefits, his monthly payments should automatically resume as soon as the overpayment is recovered. The only other thing I could suggest is contacting the offices of either your U.S. congressional representative or one of your U.S. senators to ask them to contact Social Security to try to help resolve your problem.

Best, Jerry