> > This happened to my son, who gets ss because of a disability, > > when some joker at an old address apparently wrote "deceased" on > > a piece of mail that was returned. We had to go through quite a > > bit to get him back among the living as far as ss was concerned. > > > > "Joan Best" <joanbest@earthlink.net> > > I'll take your word for it, but I am hard pressed to believe that > a person's benefits would be severed on the basis of a piece of > mail with "deceased" being written on it. There has to be much > more to the story. For instance, why would the SSA even see that > piece of mail - unless, of course, the legally required change of > address was not made. > > Further, I am astonished to learn that we have government > employees so dense that when a person presents himself with proper > identification that this employee wouldn't accept the fact that he > is alive. Or is that process the "quite a bit" it took to get him > back among the living? > > "Richard A. Pence" <richardpence@pipeline.com> When his check was not deposited in his account [I am the payee] I called SS to find out why. They said he had been reported deceased and that was why. I asked what I had to do to get him back among the living. I had to take him and travel the 50 miles to the town which housed the SS office. I brought his state issued ID and my son. They were not going to accept this. As I recall they wanted his birth certificate. We went back and fourth. They contacted people, wrote up a bunch of stuff, went back and forth. We sat in that office over two hours, with me periodically pointing out to the worker that my son was right there in the flesh and obviously not dead, while the worker tried some other tactic to get him back on the rolls. It certainly was not as easy as showing simple ID. [As I remember, at one point they wanted me to take him to the police for fingerprint verification.] This is NOT an urban legend. Joan "Joan Best" <joanbest@earthlink.net>