I don't understand that SS holds your first monthly payment. But then when you die family only gets 255 towards burial or cremation. I thought if they holding first monthly check back, it'd be good to pay my mom's bills for death month. I paid her bills on time, due big of example: Sept 1st she was in no state to talk. She left them for me to get them paid. Cause we've always thought that would be last pymt month. Ss paying us back for withholding my first month, I never got? Makes sense like that. But to my surprise before we got her check from life insurance (she died September 29th) I had already paid her Sept 1st bills for rent, electricity, etc. Only to find out SS took September payment back out her account. So bounced checks, charges from bank, etc. I had to go to bank show death certificate and thank God it was in that fast, pay the bank to cover the bills and thankfully bank wavered therebank charges. I believe SS is robbing us of our first month benefits. How else would that make sense!!! Sheila

Hi Sheila. Social Security's laws are established by Congress, and the Social Security Administration simply implements the regulations that Congress puts into law. Any complaints about the Social Security law should be directed to members of Congress.

To clarify how payments work, Social Security pays regularly scheduled monthly benefits a month behind. In other words, benefits for August are paid in September, and so on. Therefore, the benefit payment that your mother was scheduled to receive in September was for the month of August. If your mother died on September 29th, then she would have been due the payment she received in September, but not the payment that would have been paid in October. Under the law, a person's benefits terminate effective with the month in which they die, meaning that if your mother died in September the last payment that she was eligible for was the payment received in September that was for August.

If Social Security took back your mother's last payment and if she was eligible for that payment then it can be reissued to an heir or the executor of her estate. The priority list on who can be paid a Social Security underpayment is explained on the following Social Security website: https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-1724.html.

Best, Jerry