About 13,500 federal payments worth $175 million were headed to people who had already died, and Treasury says its Do Not Pay system identified and returned them. The department put the figures in an October 6 release on results under President Trump’s March 25, 2025 order, Executive Order 14249. The same release says checks on who owns a payee’s bank account became fully operational on September 30.
What the 13,500 returned payments represent
Do Not Pay is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s screening service, which checks federal payments against data sources before money goes out. Treasury says it screened more than 1.1 billion federal payments totaling about $3.7 trillion. Out of that volume, about 13,500 payments totaling $175 million would have gone to deceased individuals.
The dollar figure works out to about $13,000 per payment on average. Treasury describes them only as payments that would have gone to deceased individuals. The release does not break the total down by program or payee.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the numbers as a change in method. “We are moving beyond ‘pay and chase’ and making prevention the federal government’s first line of defense,” he said. Pay and chase is the older approach of sending the money first and trying to recover it afterward.
The executive order carries the title “Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse,” and Treasury says the announced results fulfill key requirements of it. Bessent said the department “continues to transform how the federal government protects taxpayer dollars.” The release gives no figure for how much of the $3.7 trillion was in doubt before screening.
The bank-account ownership check
The second headline is about verification at the point of payment. Treasury piloted tools to confirm that a payee owns the bank account named on a payment and to check that a taxpayer identification number is present and in the right format. Both became fully operational on September 30, 2026, according to the release.
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The practical effect is that a payment failing either test can be returned before the funds go out. For a family, that means an account that no longer belongs to the intended payee, or a payment missing a valid ID number, is more likely to stall than to be quietly paid and recalled later.
Treasury also says about 99 percent of federal programs can now access all the Do Not Pay data sources they are authorized to use, up from about 4 percent at the end of fiscal 2025. Most remaining programs should finish onboarding in early fiscal 2027. Records screened rose to over 2.3 billion from 641 million.
Nine data sources were added, according to Treasury, including company registration data from OpenCorporates and verification against Social Security’s Numident file.
What families do when a payment arrives after a death
None of this changes what survivors must do themselves. Social Security says a funeral home will usually report a death, so a family may not need to. Its survivors page says that directly, and its booklet on survivors benefits tells families to give the funeral director the deceased’s Social Security number.
The same Social Security publication covers money that lands after a death. When the person was receiving benefits, it says the benefits received for the month of death and any later months must be returned. For direct deposit, the family asks the bank to send the funds back. A paper check should not be cashed.
The booklet also notes that eligible family members may be able to receive survivors benefits for the month the beneficiary died. A one-time lump-sum death payment of $255 can go to a surviving spouse who was living with the deceased, or to an eligible child if there is no spouse.
Those rules sit beside Treasury’s new checks rather than inside them. Treasury’s release describes controls on federal payments in general and says nothing about how a grieving household should handle a deposit that arrives after a funeral.
The gap is where mistakes happen. A deposit that lands the month after a death looks like routine income, and a family settling an estate may spend it before the bank or the agency asks for it back. Treasury’s screening is aimed at catching such payments before they go out.
Treasury says it will keep expanding Do Not Pay data, strengthening payment verification and building fraud prevention into government-wide payment controls. Access to all the data sources reached only about 4 percent of federal programs at the end of fiscal 2025, so the screening is still new for most agencies.
For a household, the open question is the timing. Treasury’s checks run before money leaves the government, but a deposit that does reach the account after a death still has to be returned under Social Security’s rules, and the bank or the agency can ask for it back.
Did a deposit arrive after the funeral?
A Social Security payment that lands after a death can look like routine income, but the benefits for the month of death and any later months generally have to be returned. A family that spends it can face a demand to repay it later.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit includes a first-week checklist for when a spouse dies, including not spending the payment for the month of death. Part 7, on taxes, spouses and survivors, covers what a surviving spouse handles first.
Get the first-week survivor checklist for the month-of-death payment →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Steps to Stop the Scams That Took $7.7 Billion From Seniors
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
