“I owe for benefits paid when I was 12.”

Maya was 29 and had just filed for a small disability benefit of her own after surgery when the letter came. It said she had been overpaid $16,320 in Supplemental Security Income, and it listed months from 2009 to 2011. She was 12, 13 and 14 years old.

“My first thought was that it was a scam. My second was that I didn’t have sixteen thousand dollars.”

She did the right thing first. She did not call any number printed on the letter. She signed in to her own my Social Security account at ssa.gov, and the overpayment was there. It was real.

As a child, Maya had a hearing impairment and had received SSI. Her mother was her representative payee, the person SSA pays on a child’s behalf. SSI is a needs-based program, and for a child living with a parent, part of the parent’s income counts. The letter said that during those years, her mother had started a job that was not reported, and SSI should have been lower or stopped.

Maya called her mother, who lives two states away. Her mother was quiet for a long time, then said she thought the school or the employer told Social Security those things. She had been working nights and raising three kids. She had kept a shoebox of papers from those years, and that weekend she mailed it to Maya: report cards, a crayon drawing of their old house, pay stubs, a few faded SSA envelopes.

Maya read the rules before deciding what to do. SSA can seek repayment of a childhood overpayment from the person the benefits were paid for, even if a parent received and spent the money, and in some cases from the payee too. That is why the letter came to her. But SSA also has to consider whether the person was at fault, and a child of 12 who did not receive, manage or report anything is in a very different position from the adult who did.

She thought about a reconsideration, which says SSA’s facts are wrong. The shoebox suggested the job and the dates were probably right, so she did not file one. A waiver fit better. On Form SSA-632, she wrote what she knew in short, dated sentences: her age in each year on the letter, that her mother was the payee, that she never had access to the payments or knew about reporting rules, and that she learned of the overpayment only when the letter arrived. She attached a copy of the payee records SSA had sent when she asked, and her birth certificate.

The financial part was just as important. Her new benefit was small, she rented a room from a friend, and she still had medical bills from the surgery. She wrote the numbers from her bank statements and pharmacy receipts. Then she read the date on the letter, added 5 days for mail and 30 days, and filed in person, with a receipt, nine days before that date, so SSA would not start taking money from her new benefit while it decided.

What she did

1. 1Checked that the letter was real. She signed in to her own my Social Security account instead of calling a number on the letter. The overpayment was listed there.
2. 2Learned who was paid. Her mother was the representative payee. Maya asked SSA for the payee records for the months on the letter.
3. 3Filed a waiver inside 30 days. SSA-632 with her age in each year, a short dated explanation, and a budget from real statements. Filed in person with a dated receipt.

What happened

SSA offered a personal conference, and Maya went, with the shoebox. About five months after she filed, a letter said the waiver was approved for the full amount. SSA’s decision about her mother, as the payee, was a separate matter, and Maya did not have to answer for it.

A waiver is never automatic, and each case is decided on its own facts. But if you were a child when the benefits were paid, say so plainly and show your age for each year on the letter. It is often the most important fact in the file.