Beaufort school board member gets $1,200 stimulus check for his dead mother. Now what?
Beaufort County Board of Education member David Striebinger of St. Helena Island got a surprise in the mail on Saturday: a $1,200 federal stimulus check for his deceased mother.
At first he saw humor in it.
“It will take more than $1,200 to get Mom to come on back,” he said.
But then he wondered what to do with it.
The crazy thing is that it was addressed to “Rosemary Helwig decd.”
“That should have been kind of a clue,” Striebinger said.
It was mailed to her former assisted-living facility in Beaufort.
Rosemary Helwig died in February 2018 in Beaufort, where she spent the last two years of a long and productive life.
She had been an administrative assistant to a federal appeals court judge and later the administrative assistant for Judge Joseph Pines of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Maryland.
She supervised law clerks, and one was quoted in her obituary: “Rosemary was a trailblazer in her own right, and if she had been born later in time, she could have been any of the judges for whom she worked.”
But at age 93, with diabetes and other health problems, “She told her doctors, ‘That’s it. I’m done,’ “ Striebinger said.
After her passing, he filed 2018 taxes for his late mother. And that’s how he got the COVID-19 federal stimulus check in the mail.
It is made out to both he and his mother.
“I could’ve cashed that check,” he said.
The envelope says what to do if the recipient is deceased, but Striebinger wanted someone to know about an obvious oversight.
He turned to the IRS website dedicated to the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a congressional response to the economic crisis prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. The IRS has cranked out more than 128 million stimulus checks totaling more than $218 billion.
Striebinger found an address for the inspector general and sent this note:
“I received a $1,200 payment for my mom who died 2/06/18. It is addressed to Rosemary Helwig decd, which should be a clue to your software. I doubt this is an isolated incident, which is why I am alerting you.
“What should I do with the check? Can I just void it and tear it up?”
The AARP and media reports say the IRS originally had no plan for the checks that went to the deceased.
But earlier this month, the AARP reported: “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) finally has an answer: Give the money back.”
The CARES Act does not mandate that, it reports, but the IRS says to do this if a paper check arrives for the deceased and has not been cashed:
“Write ‘Void’ in the endorsement section on the back of the check.
“Mail the voided Treasury check immediately to the appropriate IRS location for your state.
“Don’t staple, bend or paper clip the check.
“Include a note stating the reason for returning the check. “
Striebinger said he did some quick calculating in his head.
“Say there are 10,000 people in my situation, times $1,200,” he said. “That’s money ... $12 million.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 1:02 PM.
