Retirement & Financial Planning Report

Such notices are increasing as an unintended consequence of “do not pay” initiatives aimed at cutting down on mistaken payments. Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com

It turns out getting a notice from OPM asking you to prove you are still alive can be a little off-putting, and confusing, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association has said.

“We have heard from multiple living federal annuitants that they have received letters from OPM RS asking them to return a notarized form confirming their current information – in essence providing a notarized form to prove they are still alive,” it said in a letter to OPM.

The organization said that such notices are increasing as an unintended consequence of “do not pay” initiatives in which the agency cross-matches records from a Treasury Department database of deaths against the federal retirement rolls. If the death has not been reported to OPM, its retirement services (RS) branch attempts to verify the death.

If the death is verified, OPM stops the annuitants’ annuity payments and moves to recoup any payments made after the death. If OPM cannot verify the reported death, it sends the annuitant an address verification/proof of life letter—and if there is no response, it can suspend annuity payments pending proof that the person is alive.

NARFE said in its letter that a match, however, “may be erroneous, have the wrong date of death, or refer to a person with the same name as a retirement annuitant, but who is not the annuitant.” While NARFE does not object to the data matching, it said, “we are concerned that OPM RS is unfairly shifting the burden to verify/prove life onto annuitants when OPM RS possesses insufficient evidence of death.”

It added: “The problem is compounded by the fact that, according to continual and consistent reports by NARFE members, it is very difficult to get through to OPM RS (or the right person at OPM RS) on the phone. Federal annuitants may justifiably be wary that a letter asking them to mail back personally identifiable information on a notarized form may be part of an attempt to defraud them. When they cannot reach anyone at OPM RS to confirm the validity of such a letter or to assist them with next steps, the process imposes even more burden and cost on federal annuitants who are forced to prove they are still alive.”

The letter asked OPM to evaluate the program, taking into consideration “the probability of false positives, and the negative impacts they have on the federal annuitants.”

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