What rights do you have or don't have if you have been over paid by social security?

I have a friend whose husband passed away and she receives ssi benefits they recently sent her a letter saying that they had over paid her $35,000.00 over a two and a half year period is there any thing legally she can do to lower the amount due?

She needs to contact a lawyer. That's a lot of money.

It's not technically legal. With that said, social security has had major problems with paying correct amounts for years now. If you look around some newspaper archives, (try the AP), you'll find several articles over the last 5 or so years about social security even going so far as to pay people who've been dead for years. There was one gentleman that had called SSA twice and written two letters that the person they were sending the check to was deceased, and he still continued to get the checks over a year later.
On the other hand, I've heard that same type of thing, that they sent a death certificate to the SSA, and a few months later they got a letter stating that they had to pay the money back immediately or face the penalties, even though they hadn't cashed the checks.

And be sure you're ACTUALLY getting overpaid. You may just be getting more than you think. To cover yourself form possible backlash, call your local SSA office and discuss it with them. And just because they gave it to you, doesn't mean it isn't theft. See the link below. It was the banks error, but guess who got in trouble?

Why would anyone ask any questions in such forums?
You're better off standing on a street corner. You're getting information from anyone that wants to sound important. Even if someone says they are an authority, ie; attorney, judge, etc. They are to be assumed to be lieing. You can't trust anything here. If you do, you could have just taken the advice of a complete lunatic straight out of an asylum and you wouldn't know. Good luck.

You have the right to pay the money back.