The secret to oldest-lived areas is fraud

Reminds me of the experiences I had when I was in pensions. Most schemes had a spouses pension. So what would happen would be that once a guy got old they would marry a young lady with 3 kids and if he dies they would receive the pension. So you could end up paying the pension for so long but it had never been funded that way. The pension schemes changed the rules to limit the age difference between the spouses to match the funding assumptions but IIRC those rules were ruled illegal for the existing members.

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Americans can correct me, but IIRC wasn’t the state paying out spousal pensions for Civil war veterans well into the 20th Century because of the same age issue? (80 year old marrying an 18 year old. That sort of thing).

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Last child pension ended in 2020.[Last dependent Civil War pension](Irene Triplett - Wikipedia

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Yeah, and the last Civil War spousal pension was also 21st century.

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How did that work? Was the child disabled? The schemes I know only paid child pension till they left Uni latest or if they were disabled for life.

ETA: yeah the Wikipedia page says she had cognitive impairments

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On an aside, for our company DB fund where I am chair :grin: (the regulator doesn’t like it but we managed to explain it coz of my pensions experience) the valuation is done using actual ages for married people.

IIRC the other rule is the spouse you have at retirement when we calculate your benefits is the only legit one.

Our contracts with benefits that apply to spouses have a provision that it only transfers to the first spouse, so it can’t chain thru a series of widow(er) marriages. It makes sense that pensions would have similar provisions (but IANAPA).

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I’ve decided to make this thread my catch-all for “not reporting the death” pension fraud.

Nothing major new, but I don’t believe I linked my old post:

Can the Government Tell If You’re Dead or Alive?

by meep

4 December 2019
https://stump.marypat.org/article/1290/can-the-government-tell-if-you-re-dead-or-alive

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it was an AO thread about parents in suitcases and other instance of fraud, right? That thread was gold.

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and it was that thread on the AO - it is referenced in meep’s article

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my original thread was named something like a guy carrying dead relative’s bones in a backpack

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I debated whether put this in the political DOGE thread…but I think this snippet actually belongs here.

Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-executive-order-f6ed32d9?st=1RpHQy&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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Gonna guess a lot of those “people” are mafia-related. Who would dare to take them off the roll?

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This is social security not local 420 electricians union pension fund administered by fat uncle Tony

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I would actually go for dependent collecting on deceased parent’s record or data issues as a secondary answer.

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It had better be data issues or Elon batting .301 like he likes to put it. A 150 year old collecting social security is going to have collected for 80 years with the past 30 years of them being beyond an age anyone would think it’s reasonable. If no actuary at Social Security noticed this in 30 years it seems insane.

Hmmmmm that actually makes me wonder. If a 100 year old married a 20 year old and adopted her baby… and the baby was disabled… would that baby get benefits for 50 years - or longer! - on their adoptive parent’s record? Are those the 150 year olds on the Social Security records? (Dead, but benefits are still being provided on their record.)

I saw someone on Twitter stating tgat some date in 1875 was a system default or something. So data issue seems most likely. But also I don’t know how their records work. If you’re collecting on your parent’s record that sounds possible. Two grandsons of the 10th US President, Tyler, are alive today because if two generations of 80 year old dads.

The Social Security equivalent of Irene Triplett perhaps?

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My son is receiving benefits due to Stuart, but the record is tied to my son’s name/SSN now, not Stu.

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They could still be tied together behind the scenes and thst wouldn’t be apparent from the letter. It’s not like Musk’s people understand the systems they’re poking around in.

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