‘I cannot understand how they can do this’: Social Security overpaid this North Texas widow by $41K — and now demands she pay it back. As clawbacks become common, the SSA announces new rules

“I can’t sleep. It’s just affecting me in a lot of ways,” Prisock told Fox 4 reporter Lori Brown, while fighting back tears. “I just cannot understand how they can do this to people.”

It’s stories like Prisock’s that spurred lawmakers to step in and issue an official request to the SSA’s acting commissioner “to take additional action to reduce overpayments and prevent undue harm on the most vulnerable Social Security recipients.”

And now, they may be seeing the results of that effort. The SSA’s new commissioner, Martin O’Malley, announced a series of updates to immediately address these issues on March 20.

Martin acknowledged that clawbacks “can result in grave injustices” to the individuals involved, including older adults who’ve lost their homes or been left in dire financial straits after having their benefits cut off or having to repay a decades-old overpayment.

As for Prisock, she appealed the repayment order but was denied three times. Here’s more on what amounts to a big problem for some of America’s most vulnerable residents.

A costly ‘human error’

Prisock said her life turned upside down when she received the letter from the SSA in May 2023. She shared the document with Fox 4 and it reads as follows:

“We reduce Social Security benefits paid to widows or widowers if they also receive a government pension based on their own work. We reduce benefits by two-thirds of the amount of the pension. Your benefit is less than two-thirds of the amount of the pension. For this reason, we cannot pay you… We paid you $87,250.80 for June 2020 through April 2023. Since we should have paid you $45,736.80 for June 2020 through April 2023, we paid you $41,514 more than you were due.”

Essentially, Prisock wasn’t eligible to claim survivor benefits from her late husband because she also received a pension through the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.

She claims she told the SSA about her state pension and that an agent called her up when she first received the overpayment notice, admitting: “I made a mistake. I’m human… it was during COVID.”

“I’m human as well — and I didn’t make the mistake,” Prisock said, arguing she shouldn’t have to dig up $41,000 to cover a government agency’s error.

Prisock’s letter from the SSA said she’ll receive her monthly retirement benefit check of $1,128.20 until the agency starts to collect the overpayment — at which point, it could reduce or halt her benefits until her debt is covered.