Deceased Reporting

At Consumer Justice Law Firm, we help you recover from the harmful consequences of deceased reporting by upholding and protecting your rights under federal and state law. This includes enforcing your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and doing everything the law allows to hold companies accountable for the reckless way they handle your data. 

Deceased reporting is a type of credit report error that is incredibly common. Justice for deceased reporting looks like this: Making credit bureaus, other consumer reporting agencies, and data providers (1) fix their mistakes, (2) pay you compensation for the harm they caused, and (3) pay for your legal bills because you had to force them to do the right thing.

Deceased reporting is so harmful that frequently just the fact that you were reported as deceased is enough to pursue legal action. Talk to us as soon as you’re aware.

What Deceased Reporting Is

When someone is inadvertently listed as deceased on a credit report or other consumer report it  is called deceased reporting. It is a type of credit report error that is a common cause of credit denials and other rejections for those impacted, and it has a unique capacity to spread and cause wide-ranging financial harm.   

The ability to correctly mark individuals as deceased on their credit profile is actually a consumer safeguard that is meant to prevent identity theft and financial exploitation. Fraudsters peruse obituaries and other sites to identify the recently deceased and then leap into action attempting to access bank accounts, lines of credit, benefits, and more. By marking someone deceased, it flags their accounts for careful scrutiny of any subsequent action and typically locks down their entire financial profile until court orders and other formal documents release access to the right person. But deceased reporting gone wrong is a living nightmare. 

What Causes Deceased Reporting

Deceased reporting is usually caused by one of three things: (1) a clerical error (such as someone accidentally flagging one of your bank or store accounts as deceased); (2) other reporting errors that turn into a deceased reporting error. (For instance, if you have a mixed credit report that you don’t notice or don’t fix, you could end up being incorrectly marked as deceased if the other person dies and their data is still mixed with yours.); (3) your social security number is accidentally toggled to deceased by the Social Security Administration.  

How Deceased Reporting Harms You

Decased reporting can harm you in any of the following ways and more: 

  • Financial Lockdown. If you’re believed to be dead, access to your checking, savings, retirement, benefits, insurance, lines of credit, and more, go into a lockdown status until you can prove you’re still alive.
  • Credit Score Drops to Zero. All of your hard work maintaining a healthy credit score can end with a rapid and unfair drop all the way to zero. Afterall, if you’re dead, you don’t need a credit score anymore. 
  • Mortgage denials. When you show up as deceased on your credit report, lenders can’t process and approve a mortgage in your name, even if you’re sitting right across from them. 
  • Rental denials. Whether you’re looking for a long-term rental for housing, a vacation rental for fun, or a car rental for commuting, if you aren’t alive on your credit report, you aren’t able to rent.
  • Car loan rejections. Even if you’ve saved for months, selected within your budget, and paid every single bill, loan, and debt on time, a dead person with a zero credit score is not driving off the lot with a new car.
  • Job loss. Whether you’re a new candidate or a current employee, if a healthy credit report is part of your assessment, you can be let go or passed up due to deceased reporting.
  • Credit denials. Home equity loans, personal loans, and lines of credit through a bank or lender can be stopped mid-processing or you can lose access to any already open and in good standing.
  • Store account refusals. Whether you apply for a store card or account with a favorite retail brand, or you already have accounts in good standing, you can lose access.
  • Insurance denials. Insurance policies and claims get flagged and processed as though you’re no longer among the living.
  • Added to the Death Master File. Even if the deceased reporting didn’t start with the Social Security Administration, if you're falsely reported as deceased, you can quickly be added to the SSA’s Death Master File, losing access to ALL of your finances, benefits, and accounts with one simple keystroke.
  • Mental and emotional distress. Deceased reporting is one of the most stressful and anxiety-inducing forms of credit report errors. Losing access to your entire financial life can cause rapid and disastrous consequences.

Steps To Take After Discovering Deceased Reporting

Step 1  Talk to a lawyer

The law upholds your right to accurate consumer data and obligates companies to investigate and fix their mistakes, but the system itself is broken. Investigations are frequently inadequate, and stalls, delays, and unfixed errors are common. A lawyer will clearly set out your rights, guide you through the dispute and recovery process, and get you compensation.

Step 2  Dispute the errors

Carefully review your credit reports and financial statements and dispute any inaccurate, misleading, false, or unreportable data, including any instances of deceased reporting. Do not ignore deceased reporting, even if it only shows up on an old store account. Any instance of deceased reporting should be treated seriously and disputed promptly. If you’re working with us, we’ll handle this process for you. If you’re not, file your disputes via certified mail to preserve all of your legal rights. (If you’re reported deceased by the Social Security Administration, there’s a more involved process.)

Step 3  Make them fix it

Believe it or not, sometimes proving you’re alive isn’t easy and may even involve refusals to fix the mistake. Never accept their nonsense when they say they’ve investigated and confirmed that an account was correctly marked deceased. This is a common outcome of shoddy internal investigations and does not meet their legal obligations to do the right thing. But a lawsuit usually gets the job done.

How A Deceased Reporting Attorney Leads You to a Full Recovery

Correcting deceased reporting shouldn’t have to be a complicated and convoluted process, but it frequently is. Working with an experienced attorney gives you the best shot at a full resolution and maximum compensation. 

Here’s how we help you: 

  1. We know the law. We know the laws that protect you and how to go after these careless mega-corporations using every possible legal option available. 
  2. We know the SSA. We know how to handle the process of disputing this error with the Social Security Administration.
  3. We know the problems. We’ve seen, heard, and handled every type of credit report error, including deceased reporting, and put our full knowledge and resources into everything we do. 
  4. We know the tricks. We know the tactics used by these companies to delay doing anything to fix reporting mistakes. They’d rather convince you it’s a lost cause. We know otherwise.
  5. We provide legal guidance. We help you gather necessary data and evidence, craft and file legally sound disputes, and advise you of your rights and best practices along the way.
  6. We file a lawsuit. If your errors aren’t corrected or the fallout persists, we file a lawsuit to hold companies accountable.
  7. We get you money. If you’ve been harmed by credit report errors and you’re entitled to compensation, we know how to maximize it.

Don’t underestimate the peace of mind that comes from knowing every next move is the right move toward recovery.

The Role of the Fair Credit Reporting Act

Consumer data errors are the consequence of a fast and furious economy that depends largely on the ability of monstrously large corporations to gather, process, and report data for tens of millions of individuals on a rolling basis. In the balance between speed and profit, accuracy is the first thing to go. And you pay the consequences. Because deceased reporting is part of a persistent, systemic problem, and because it causes genuine harm to consumers every single day, the federal government passed an important piece of legislation- the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to try to protect you.

We rely heavily on the FCRA to build the best possible cases and get the best possible outcomes. The FCRA gives you critical consumer reporting rights, including the right to: 

  • review your credit reports for free
  • know which data in a credit report was used to deny you an opportunity
  • dispute credit report errors
  • file lawsuits against the responsible parties
  • seek compensation for harm suffered (or, in the case of deceased reporting, potentially seek compensation for without having to prove harm)
  • make the wrongdoers pay for your legal costs and fees

How to Dispute Deceased Reporting

  • Review all your accounts for mistakes, including credit reports, benefits, insurance, retirement, banking, store accounts, and social security.
  • Gather any evidence and documentation you have to support your dispute. In this case, birth certificates, driver’s license, recent transactions, current bills, leases, etc.
  • Dispute with the SSA. If the Social Security Administration is involved and your Social Security Number has been added to the Death Master File, you will need to report in person to your local SSA office with originals of your supporting documents to be issued a formal proof of life. Copies of this document should be included with any dispute sent to a consumer reporting agency or financial entity.  
  • Write a thorough and clear letter disputing your deceased status.
  • Mail your letter, along with copies of the supporting documents, via certified mail to the credit bureau or financial company reporting the errors. This preserves your rights and leaves an easily traceable trail. Avoid using online dispute platforms.
  • Keep a copy of the letter and documents for your file.
  • Track the days. They have 30 days to respond.
  • Don’t give up. If they don’t respond, don’t investigate, don’t fix the errors, or claim that their investigation confirmed the bad data, you need a lawyer NOW.

One of the most important and least known facts about embarking on the credit error recovery journey is that you don’t have to pay out of pocket for legal help. Under the FCRA, you are not expected to spend your own money or take on debt just to dispute credit errors and demand corrections of your data since you didn’t create the problem in the first place. The ones who made the problem have to pay to fix it. 

At Consumer Justice, we respect this fee-shifting provision for the role it plays in our legal system, especially since it serves as an equalizer, bringing justice to everyone, including those who otherwise couldn’t afford to work with an attorney. We value each and every client and every case, and appreciate that the law has carved out a way to center equity and fairness in legal representation for consumers harmed by big business data errors. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I dispute deceased reporting with the Social Security Administration?

Yes, if necessary. Not every incidence of deceased reporting begins or ends with you being reported deceased by the Social Security Administration. For instance, if a single retail account mistakenly reports you as deceased and you catch and correct the error right away, you may not need to involve the SSA at all. However, if that single incidence of deceased reporting cascades across your financial and credit profile, causing a financial lockdown, the error may make its way to the SSA and your SSN may be mistakenly placed in the Death Master File. As soon as you’re aware of a deceased reporting incident, check your SSA account to confirm that you’re considered alive and well. If you are listed as deceased in the SSA’s Death Master File, the process for fixing this error is not typically called “disputing” but rather obtaining a proof of life, which is used to dispute errors on consumer reports.

How long does it take to fix deceased reporting?

As long as it takes to get the consumer reporting agencies to correct their files. In theory, it should only take about 30 days for a company to investigate a dispute and correct its errors. But, given the overall lack of incentive to complete adequate investigations and the general disregard for the consumer experience, it may take considerably longer and may require that you work with a consumer protection attorney, such as the ones on our team at Consumer Justice Law Firm. We won’t be able to guarantee a timeline for corrections, but you will have the security of knowing that you are actually on track to get corrections and potentially even get money, too.