That gives me another thought. How can we be so certain that everyone who dies gets buried? Like what if your first thought is like, “Well pops is dead, let’s feed him to the pigs so his body will be useful,” or, what if you decide to eat him because that’s what your culture just does?
Mistakes! I bet there’s mistakes in the data!
People can and do go to jail for Social Security fraud.
Also if there’s a death certificate or funeral home, or hospital or morgue or cemetery involved Social Security will eventually find out. You need a death certificate to collect life insurance or pass down assets.
If your parent dies at home and you just bury them in the back yard and you didn’t have any life insurance on them then you could maybe get away with it. If no one reported them missing.
I think these things get flagged when they are collecting SS and are on Medicare and go 3+ years without a claim
So if you want to tie off loose ends then have kids at a young age. This way when SS comes knocking after you are dead your kid can just say that they are you
Under the guise of small family farmers won’t have to sell the farm to pay the capital gains tax when mom and dad die. But it’s really just a massive tax avoidance scheme for the wealthy. Borrow agains the stock to live large, deduct the interest (if you have a good accountant), kick the bucket, pay off the loans (often with nontaxable life insurance) heirs get step up in basis can sell tomorrow with no capital gains.
I do wonder how much fraud is going on.
The current comptroller of NY state has been aware of this issue for a long time (with respect to the state pensions), so he’s always made a big deal every time they catch somebody at it (and have gone through legal processes, etc.)
I went to his press release page, and had to go back only to Dec 30 to get such an announcement:
https://www.osc.ny.gov/press/releases/2024/12/dinapoli-queens-woman-sentenced-probation-and-pays-full-restitution-stealing-85000-nys-pension
I imagine the Social Security folks do not have the incentives to pursue such cases as much as the NY state comptroller, an elected position.
But as to burying a body and not reporting a death… you’re going to have charges beyond merely pension fraud or estate tax fraud or whatever.
Using the “Ooops, I forgot” excuse will likely not cut it.
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to claim that was a particularly likely scenario. But I imagine you could potentially get away with it for a while.
I don’t know how old you are, or how old most of the other posters on this thread are, but I am impressed by how much you have saved if you are, as I expect, similar in age to my own children (in their 30s and 40s).
I had no significant liquid assets such as equities when I was 40 years old. However I was able to save large amounts in my 40s and 50s to retire at age 58. I projected that my assets would get drawn down after retirement to cover expenses but they have actually increased with excellent investment returns.
What I am trying to say in a long-winded way is that you will probably find yourself more comfortable in retirement than you expected! I appreciate that there are some large potential financial exposures that US retirees face but, even allowing for that, you should be able to retire earlier than you may think is possible if you prefer retirement activities to working!
Just some advice from an old guy who was glad he retired at 58…..
Canada has similar tax relief for family farms that pass down to the next generation but only the first C$500,000 of capital gains is exempt from taxation to ensure only small farmers get the break. I am not sure it is good public policy to give small farmers such a break but that is a separate issue. I personally benefited from the rules on our family farm but that is not the test of good tax policy!
They’re not… In NL we’re having a problem with bodies accumulating in the hospital morgue because people aren’t claiming them. Redirect Notice
I’ve found the issue confusing. Initially, it was assumed that it was because funeral costs were too high for poor families to be able to afford to bury their dead. The death benefit rates were increased, and that solved a few cases. However, it sounds like there are other issues with most of the other accumulating dead. My impression is it’s some mix of lack of family, lack of family willing to be involved, family disputes, and cost leading to bodies accumulating in the morgue.
It’s not common but there have been people that buried relatives in the backyard and contiued to collect their benefits:
Go Big or Go Home | Vermont | Social Security Fraud | Fraud of the Day
A Grim Trend of Collecting Government Benefits After Death - Off The Grid News
What an interesting press release
Sounds like she shot herself in the foot by requesting beneficiary info and bringing attention to herself when all NY did at the time was to simply stopping payment
I assume this happens pretty regularly (unreported death). But it seems like they usually catch on in a few months and write it off since it’s next to impossible to prove outright fraud unless payments go out the door for years and it is easy to ID whoever is spending the $$
I’m sure this happens a lot. But, what would be your exit strategy here? You absolutely will be found out eventually.
There is no strategy. I’m just saying there might be a lot data errors simply because people are unaware of death reporting procedures. Kind of like how I bet a bunch of people are driving without licenses or insurance simply because nobody ever told them what the laws were.
That last part I very much doubt. The ignorance piece, anyway.
People who commit felonies like this are not typically the brightest.
A more clever abuse is to open credit cards in the name of a dying individual and max them out while pretending to be that person.
meep’s article (linked in other thread) mentions how it could be that someone just keeps it going. after a while, perhaps not sure how to alert authorities to stop bc it shines a light on it having gone on too long already. story included example of a high earning pensioner (100K a yr as a pension) keeping mother’s SS for like $15K/yr. who really knows, but untangling it leads to something. lack of brightness is part of it though.
Yeah this was the scenario that I was imagining. In addition to this, I bet there are a whole bunch of people who are born that the government doesn’t know about! Like maybe someone doesn’t realize they didn’t have a birth certificate until they realized they needed one as an adult like their first day on the job.
People are usually pretty good about getting a SS card issued for their kids for tax breaks
Unless they are in a cult?
Depends on the cult, I think Scientology for one is crazy about getting their tax breaks