Social Security

I'm not old enough for Social Security yet. (to receive payments that is) I certainly have paid in to the plan.

However in taking care of Elder Folk my husband and I have had a dealing or two with the good old folks who run the Social Security phone lines.

First my husband calls to get my MIL's address changed in SS.

He calls the national line. Is on hold. Then is asked if he wants to be called back. Sure. So he gets his name on a waiting list of call backs.

Forty minutes later he gets a call back and is put on hold again. Seriously, what is the point of a call back if you can't talk to someone?

Then he decides to call the local office. And within minutes he has a live person. Oh joy!

Nope, not meant to be. Whenever you call for a person not yourself they have to get on line and confirm all the essentials.

So my MIL confirms her SS #, her birthdate, her address and then comes the ringer: What is your mother's maiden name?"

My MIL doesn't know it. The SS agent is relentless, this MUST be given. My MIL is by this time shouting, "I am an old woman, I was born in the Ukraine, I do not know my mother's name. I am an old woman."

None of this matters to SS. They want the facts, all the facts.

So they had to hang up.

The next day they went to the local office and my MIL could prove she was who she was and she didn't have to give her mother's maiden name (which she still didn't know). My husband did ask the agent for what they had written down. Neither one of them made sense to my MIL, but that's a topic for another day.

So MY encounter was to call and get my dad's address changed and get him a new card, which he seems to have misplaced.

Due to my husband's experience, I feel like I have a leg up. So in big print I write his SS #, his date of birth, his mother's maiden name and I feel confident he knows his former address without promoting.

So it goes. I call his local SS office, learning from the national experience of my husband,  and I get a person on the third ring! And the questions begin -

SS#? done
date of birth? done
Mother's maiden name? Pass again, yes!
Residence? My dad gives his current place. Wrong.
Then I signal him to tell his former residence. Wrong.
He goes back one more residence. Wrong.

He shouts, "Well, I don't know what address you have down, these are all the addresses I have lived. You must have some wrong information." And hands the phone back to me.

She is apologetic, but firm. Rules are rules. He could be trying to get someone's SS#.

Yup, I've heard there is a lot of that going around, 87 year old men trying to get someone else's SS.

She reiterates that NONE of the addresses he gave were correct. So I'm figuring they have an address from 1957 or earlier. Surely some SS information came to him at his former address, when he started to receive payments?

Guess not.

So I will be taking him to the local office to get this straightened out.

Moral of the story?

Oh there are too many to count. All I can say is SS better be worth it!