The representative payee was a woman I’d never heard of. I asked the man to read me the name, and I recognized the last name immediately because it belonged to my husband’s older brother, who had died in 2012. I told him there couldn’t be a child because his brother had never had children, and my husband had been an only child. The man said the claim was supported by a certified birth certificate and a DNA test. Then he read me the child’s name, and it was my husband’s name as the father. I asked how a fourteen-year-old could be claiming benefits from a man who had been dead for eight years. He said the original application had been filed with a court order establishing paternity.
I drove to the Social Security office with every document I had and asked to see the hearing record. The judge had ruled that my husband was the child’s biological father based on the DNA test. I asked where the DNA sample came from. The representative said it had been collected from a stored medical specimen connected to my husband’s hospital records. I told him my husband had never given permission for anything like that. He checked the file again and said the sample had been collected after his death because the family had requested an autopsy. Then he showed me the consent form. The signature authorizing the release of the specimen looked like mine. I had never signed it. The date on the form was three months after my husband’s funeral.
I asked who had submitted the request. He gave me the name of the representative payee again. Then he read the address attached to her application, and it was my house — with an apartment number that doesn’t exist. I went home and pulled out my husband’s old medical records. There was one missing page from the file, and the hospital confirmed it had been requested by someone claiming to be his next of kin. I asked who that person was. The clerk read me the name and then said the request had been accompanied by a copy of my driver’s license. I knew then why the benefit had been approved. Someone had been building a paper trail around my husband for years.
And the fourteen-year-old child’s birth certificate lists my own name as his mother.
