I have recently received a lump sum payment out of the blue and with no explanation of why (2026). I’ve made 5 calls trying to understand. The 1st fella treated me like I was stupid to be questioning it and even told me that if I didn’t want it I could give it back. But my problem is that if this turns out to be an overpayment and they decide later to take it back I won’t be able to afford my house payment. And I am currently in the process of selling some land and that plus this lump sum is going to cause my Medicare premium to double year after next. I need to get this fixed before the end of the year to prevent the Medicare premium from increasing. I think I have somewhat of an answer but still have some doubts. I have an appt in a week to go in and sit down with them to go over what happened. My history is as follows. About 12 years ago I applied and was approved for my disability. I was about 56 or 7 and began receiving my full pay with disability. When I reached about age 62 (about 2018) my ex passed away and I was able to apply for a surviving spouse benefit and started drawing another small check in addition to my disability pay. In 2024 I reached age 67 and there were no changes that occurred at that time but then about 18 months later I got a notification that I had reached retirement age and my disability was being changed to retirement and that the two benefits would now be combined and I would now only receive one check (and I think this is when they started looking at what I had received and from what I understand when they calculated that the underpayment began in 2024). My last two calls to ssa finally said that this is where the underpayment had occurred and that the lump sum was the difference in what the survivor benefit would have been when I reached retirement age as opposed to the reduced benefit I had been receiving. Which does somewhat make sense. But I ask on one of the lives and was told this should not have changed. So maybe the problem was that they had made an error by thinking I was on retirement benefits at the time instead of disability. My question is does this make sense to you? And since I was on disability and if I do truly have an under payment…should the under payment have started when I became retirement age in 2024? Or should it have started when my ex passed away since I was on disability?