Treasury says it stopped about 13,500 payments worth $175 million that would have gone to people who had died, one result of screening more than 1.1 billion federal payments in fiscal 2026. Those payments were valued at roughly $3.7 trillion, so the deceased-payee catches work out to about one payment in every 80,000. Treasury and its Bureau of the Fiscal Service released the figures on October 6. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the work as a shift away from “pay and chase,” the habit of recovering money after it has already gone out.
The screening grew out of an executive order President Trump signed on March 25, 2025, titled Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. Fiscal 2026 ran from October 2025 through September 2026. The release gives one national total for dead payees. It does not break the 13,500 payments down by program, which leaves open how many involved Social Security, veterans’ benefits, federal pensions or other payments.
What Treasury counted and what it returned
In its October 6 announcement, Treasury said the 13,500 payments, totaling $175 million, were identified and returned because they would have gone to deceased individuals. Divided out, that is an average of about $13,000 per payment, far above a typical monthly benefit. Treasury has not published how the payments were distributed by size.
For families, the question sits on the other side of those payments. When a beneficiary dies, someone has to tell the government, and the next deposit may already be scheduled. Social Security says a funeral home will usually report a death. When no funeral home is involved, or it does not report, a family member can call 1-800-772-1213 with the person’s name, Social Security number, date of birth and date of death.
Treasury’s $175 million in dead-payee catches is a reminder that a payment can still be moving after a death, and families are left to sort out what to return. 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.
Get the first-week checklist for a spouse’s death, month-of-death payment included →
Do Not Pay and the 2025 executive order
The executive order directs Treasury to put payments through verification before they are certified for release. Among the proposed checks in Section 4 is that payees not be deceased individuals, “to the greatest extent permitted by law.” Other proposed checks cover valid taxpayer ID numbers and bank accounts that are open and belong to the payee. Section 3 points Treasury to the Do Not Pay Working System as a core tool.
Do Not Pay is run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Its program page says it gives agencies data to verify a recipient’s identity and eligibility before an award or payment, at no cost to eligible agencies, and that in fiscal 2025 Treasury and Do Not Pay helped prevent, detect and recover $11.7 billion in potential fraud and improper payments. That earlier figure covers all kinds of improper payments, not only payments to the dead.
The October 6 release says about 99 percent of federal programs can now reach every legally authorized Do Not Pay data source, up from about 4 percent at the end of fiscal 2025. Over 2.3 billion records were checked against those sources, compared with 641 million a year earlier. Nine data sources were added, among them Social Security’s Numident verification. The remaining programs are expected to finish onboarding in early fiscal 2027.
What the figure does not show
Tools to confirm that a bank account belongs to the payee, and to check Taxpayer Identification Numbers, became fully operational on September 30, 2026, the last day of the fiscal year. That means the fiscal 2026 total was compiled before those account-ownership tests were fully running, and their effect has yet to show up in any annual figure. Treasury says payments that fail verification are flagged before they are disbursed.
The release also leaves out a total for improper payments prevented across the government. The only dollar figure it ties to prevention is the $175 million for deceased individuals. Without a program breakdown or a count of payments caught before release versus recovered afterward, the number is best read as a measure of what the screening found, not of how much the government saved overall.
Treasury’s own wording matters here: the payments were “identified and returned.” That points to some being caught at or after disbursement rather than all stopped in advance. Treasury has not said how many of the 13,500 fell into each group.
Reporting a death to Social Security
Social Security’s survivor benefits page says the funeral director completes Form SSA-721 and sends it to the local Social Security office, unless the death is reported through Electronic Death Registration. If the person was receiving benefits, the family should contact Social Security. When benefits were deposited directly, the bank should be told of the death as well.
The same page says any checks that arrive after a death should be returned to the Social Security office. It also describes a one-time lump-sum death payment of $255 that may go to a surviving spouse who was living with the worker at death, or otherwise to eligible children. Neither step requires waiting for a letter from Treasury or the bank.
Treasury’s $175 million figure comes from one year of a program that still has the last 1 percent of federal programs to connect. If the early fiscal 2027 onboarding finishes on schedule, the next annual tally will show whether the count of dead-payee payments falls as the data reaches every program, or rises because more of them are finally being checked.
One month-of-death payment can be the costly mistake
A payment can still arrive after a death, and the rules for what happens to it are easy to get wrong. 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, plus the 2026 payment calendar and a 75-page set of worksheets and contacts.
Get the Social Security Check Protection Kit checklist for the month of death →
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
