This act limits the government's ability to recover Social Security and SSI overpayments that were discovered ten or more years after the overpayment occurred.
Kristen McDonald Rivet
Representative
MI-8
The Social Security Overpayment Relief Act establishes a 10-year statute of limitations for the government to recover Social Security and SSI overpayments. This means the government cannot attempt to collect or offset future benefits for overpayments that occurred ten or more years before the mistake was officially discovered. This provides relief by limiting the recovery period for old benefit errors.
Social Security Bill Sets 10-Year Statute of Limitations on Overpayment Collections
The newly proposed Social Security Overpayment Relief Act takes aim at one of the most stressful financial situations for retirees and beneficiaries: getting hit with a massive bill years after the government mistakenly overpaid them. This section of the bill establishes a hard 10-year cutoff for the government to collect on old overpayments under both Social Security (Title II) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI, Title XVI).
The 10-Year Clock: When the Debt Expires
Here’s the deal: If the government paid you too much money, and that specific overpayment happened 10 years or more before the Commissioner of Social Security officially figures out the mistake, the government is blocked from trying to get that money back. This means they can’t reduce your future monthly checks, nor can they send you a scary letter demanding repayment for that specific, decade-old error.
Think of it as a statute of limitations for administrative errors. If you received $500 too much in SSI benefits in 2014, and the Social Security Administration (SSA) only discovers that error in 2025, they can’t touch that 2014 overpayment. They have to let it go. This provides a huge layer of financial security for people who rely on these benefits, removing the threat of having benefits slashed due to an accounting mistake from a decade ago.
Why This Matters for Your Budget
For most people, the biggest fear with government benefits is the surprise clawback. Imagine you’re a retired teacher living on a fixed Social Security income, and suddenly the SSA determines you were overpaid $8,000 twelve years ago because of a reporting error they missed. Under current rules, they could start docking your monthly check, potentially sinking your budget. This bill stops that specific scenario dead in its tracks.
This change directly impacts the financial stability of long-term beneficiaries. The bill essentially says that if the SSA can’t catch its own mistake within a decade, the burden of that error should not fall on the beneficiary who likely already spent the funds years ago and relied on them being correct. While the SSA loses the ability to recover these very old funds, the trade-off is providing certainty and peace of mind to millions of Americans who depend on their monthly checks to cover rent and groceries.