Last October, my mother walked into the family room of her rural North Carolina house and found my dad, her husband of nearly 60 years, sitting motionless in the recliner.

In the days that followed, as our family processed our shock and grief, we had to deal with some very practical issues, including money. As retirees, my parents had relied largely on their individual Social Security checks and his small pension to pay the bills. We assumed that, following my dad’s death, she could continue to draw income from those two sources. Plus, my mom had me—an estate and tax lawyer and journalist who has advised dozens of families and written extensively about Social Security—to help make sure the transition went smoothly.

Instead, it took five months, numerous phone calls, letters and faxes and help from my mom’s Congressman, to get all of the Social Security she was owed. Along the way, we got contradictory answers from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on the phone and conflicting letters in the mail, including one advising my mom to call a toll-free number that was disconnected.

We also saw Social Security payments appear and disappear from her bank account and began to fear that her health coverage might lapse too, since she was paying her Medicare premiums (as the majority of seniors do) through deductions from her Social Security check.

Sadly, our experience was not all that unusual. Even as the number of Americans eligible for Social Security has been rising, the SSA has shed thousands of employees. After President Donald Trump set billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency loose on the federal workforce in January 2025, more than 7,200 positions were eliminated. Additional cuts have left the agency with just 52,045 workers as of January, down almost 20% over the last decade. (See chart below.)

With automation, some functions still run smoothly. An SSA spokesman pointed to agency stats showing Americans are completing a growing number of transactions through online my Social Security accounts. But problems pile up when interaction with a human agent is required, as it is for survivor benefits.

Delays in the processing of survivor benefits can produce real hardship, considering the median retired widow or widower relies on Social Security for 75% of their total income. Compounding the problem: One thing the SSA does automatically (and quickly) is cut off benefits after notice of a death is received, usually from the funeral director. Eligibility is all-or-nothing for a month and benefits are paid in arrears.

So if a retiree dies on October 22, as my father did, SSA will typically pay the already-in-progress October benefit in mid-November, and then withdraw the money from the decedent’s account, even if it’s a joint account shared with a widow struggling to pay funeral expenses on top of normal bills.

How Social Security survivor benefits work

My mother, Doris Phillips, 77, has lived in North Carolina her whole life. She has worked as a YMCA bookkeeper, church daycare director, and a drugstore cashier. Wayne, my late father, spent his entire career at DuPont, starting at the bottom in the 1960s as a fiber puller. They raised three children—two boys who joined the Navy as submariners and me.

When health problems forced Doris to quit working in her late 50s (she has survived two strokes, a bout with cancer, a nearly fatal liver puncture, and diabetes), she........

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