Missouri mom, 52, says her life has been ruined since she was wrongly declared dead in 2007 due to social security error

A Missouri mother who was mistakenly declared dead in 2007 says she has been living a “haunting” nightmare ever since.

Madeline-Michelle Carthen, 52, claims she has had trouble keeping a job, getting a mortgage or renting an apartment because of a social security number error made nearly two decades ago.

In 2007, she was denied financial aid as a student at Webster University, eventually forcing her to drop out.

And since then, she has been unable to perform basic life tasks, such as renting a car.

“It ruined my whole life,” she told KSDK.” It has affected my life financially. If I wanted to buy a house, that’s not going to happen.’

“I was denied financial support,” she told local NBC affiliate KSDK when she was previously interviewed in 2007. “Now they’re saying, ‘Prove to us you’re not dead.’

While preparing for a summer internship in Ghana 16 years ago, she received the surprising news that she was dead according to her Social Security benefits.

When she found out her Social Security number was linked to a deceased person, Carthen laughed — initially dismissing it as a “simple mistake.”

She told the outlet at the time, “What do you mean? I’m sitting here. I have been at school for over a year and a half. How am I dead?’

But that was just the beginning of her problems.

“It’s like a ghost tour,” Carthen added.

Once her Social Security number is processed, she says Human Resources can no longer process payroll and she is typically fired.

“It’s just a matter of before my Social Security number catches up with me, and then they have to let me go…HR can’t process payroll,” she said.

Paperwork and credit reports document her as “deceased.”

And Carthen is not alone. According to Smithsonian Magazine, more than 12,000 living Americans are wrongly classified as dead every year.

This is usually due to a simple minor typo, which ultimately causes a catastrophic disaster for the victims.

Carthen said she has been dealing with these headaches for almost 20 years, but nothing has changed.

“I just want direct answers, and I haven’t been able to get those yet,” Carthen said.

Creighton Cohn, a consumer protection attorney, told KSDK that placement in the “Death Master File” could make life impossible.

Once the Social Security Administration adds someone, their identity is removed from places like banks, the IRS and Medicare.

“It can really affect every aspect of your life,” Cohn said.

Carthen filed a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration and several other government agencies in 2019, seeking more than $12 million in damages.

However, the judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the government has “sovereign immunity.”

In 2014, a keystroke led to the agency declaring Kosara Mladenovic dead while her husband had passed away.

After declaring her death, the government reportedly cut off her monthly benefits, which the family uses to support Mladenovic and pay her nursing home costs.

To correct the administration’s mistake, she must prove that she was alive, and that is no easy task. She was told to show a photo of herself holding newspapers with the date of the day on them.

In addition, she had to provide a statement from her nursing home confirming that she was a tenant, as well as her husband’s certificate and his obituary in the local newspaper.

Elder care advocate Gideon Schein told CBS NY that these types of mistakes are very difficult to correct.

“It’s much harder to undo a keystroke mistake than it is to do it,” Schein said.

‘It’s quite complicated…social security is everything to us. If that gets abused in any way, we’re in big trouble, so they’re being very careful and I understand that.”