Dead or Alive?

On a calm spring evening seven years ago, Edward Michaels, 68, a retired caterer in the Chicago suburb of Northlake, Ill., finished his chop suey dinner and told his family he was going out for a walk. He never returned.

The police could not find him, and neither could a private-detective agency. Helen Michaels, who has two teenage children, eventually went to the Social Security Administration to collect her husband's back social security payments. But the SSA told Mrs. Michaels that the money could not be transferred until her husband was accounted for. If there was still no sign of him seven years after his disappearance, the SSA said, she could ask a court to declare him dead. Then she would be eligible to collect his checks and receive widow's benefits.

Signed Document. Last April, having waited the proper time, Mrs. Michaels took her case to a Chicago judge who declared Michaels dead. Mrs. Michaels then returned to the SSA office to get her money. After a two-month delay, an SSA official told her: "Your husband is alive. That's all I can tell you right now." Mrs. Michaels demanded to know more. The SSA refused, citing HEW section 1306 that forbids anyone to look into anyone else's personal file. Mrs. Michaels was sent a form letter refusing any claim for her husband's benefits, which are now $45.30 a month, "because evidence indicates he is not deceased."

Thus the SSA and Helen Michaels confronted an increasingly bewildering bureaucratic dilemma: How do Government agencies reconcile the Freedom of Information Act with the traditional laws protecting personal privacy? Last week Mrs. Michaels was back in court to demand that the SSA prove that her husband is alive. In reply, Government attorneys insisted that the SSA could not reveal any information about him.

But at the urging of the judge, attorneys cited yet another law allowing a court to request information on a parent when support of minors is at issue. The SSA then produced a recently signed document in which Michaels said he departed because he was not getting along with his wife. "Apparently he wants to be left alone," says Mrs. Michaels' lawyer. Obviously, but Helen Michaels wants to find her husband--and demand separate support.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.