I'm actually a member of the Facebook group mentioned in the article and one guy has been receiving LQA benefits for nearly 20 years which amounts to around $800,000! This is all so ridiculous and reading everybody's stories is just making me rage!
I know this is a lot of information so if you have questions I will do my best to answer them! :)
my be there is some statue of limitation on these payback the money which had been given by mistake. For example equity maxims of law states : Equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber on their rights
Vigilantibus non dormientibus aequitas subvenit.
A person who has been wronged must act relatively swiftly to preserve their rights. Otherwise, they are guilty of laches, an untoward delay in litigation with the presumed intent of denying claims. This differs from a statute of limitations, in that a delay is particularized to individual situations, rather than a general prescribed legal amount of time. In addition, even where a limitation period has not yet run, laches may still occur. The equitable rule of laches and acquiescence was first introduced in Chief Young Dede v. African Association Ltd. (1910) 1 N.L.R 130 at 133.
Alternatives:
Delay defeats equity Equity aids the vigilant, not those who sleep on their rights
I don't understand the logic of overpayment. Like, if I go to a store, and get given insufficient change or something, I'm SOL. But if a company looks at their books DECADES later and figures out THEY messed up, I'm on the hook to rectify that mistake?
I went to the hospital once and paid for the services and then two weeks later a refund check showed up. I called the hospital and said, I think you sent this in error. And they said, no, we double checked, that's your money go ahead and cash it. And I said, let me be very clear, I do not want to cash this only to have to pay it back to you. I want your guarantee this will not be the case. And they assured me there was no error, so I cashed the check. Two weeks later, I got an overpayment notification in the mail demanding the money back. How am I even legally on the hook for someone else (or the entire accounting department in this case) being that stupid?
Meanwhile, we normal people have no recourse when scammers overcharge our credit cards or the like. *flips a table*
Unfortunately this sort of thing is incredibly common when dealing with DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting System). If you are getting underpaid.... good luck with that. It takes multiple pieces of paperwork and many months to get your back pay. If you get overpaid, they will pull your money back AS SOON as they find out about it. It is not uncommon for soldiers to go check their MyPay and find that they are now going to get 2 cent paychecks for a couple of pay cycles. That's bad enough for single soldiers, but I know a married soldier with a couple of kids who was getting paid the wrong BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) rate the entire time he was at a duty station, and Finance didn't figure it out until he left that station. It's pretty hard to move an entire family when you don't get paid for three months.
Yup, happened to a friend of mine. They were station in Japan and the BAH seemed really low. They found out much later they were getting single sailor amount when in fact they had two kids. Such a mess.
Yep. It's a mess. Me and my husband both work (he is the one in the military) and I watch his LES like a hawk because I want to be sure we aren't being overpaid or underpaid. If we got overpaid somehow I would definitely bank the money in savings for the inevitable day when they take it out of a check, lol.
Ugh. I've just started to learn about how different it is being out of the U.S. with different government agencies, and seriously... SO GLAD that we just get provided housing.
This seems like the kind of thing they can only get away with when it's one on one and no one knows it's systematic. Hopefully this petition will go viral.
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I know this is a lot of information so if you have questions I will do my best to answer them! :)
Reply
For example equity maxims of law states : Equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber on their rights
Vigilantibus non dormientibus aequitas subvenit.
A person who has been wronged must act relatively swiftly to preserve their rights. Otherwise, they are guilty of laches, an untoward delay in litigation with the presumed intent of denying claims. This differs from a statute of limitations, in that a delay is particularized to individual situations, rather than a general prescribed legal amount of time. In addition, even where a limitation period has not yet run, laches may still occur. The equitable rule of laches and acquiescence was first introduced in Chief Young Dede v. African Association Ltd. (1910) 1 N.L.R 130 at 133.
Alternatives:
Delay defeats equity
Equity aids the vigilant, not those who sleep on their rights
Reply
I went to the hospital once and paid for the services and then two weeks later a refund check showed up. I called the hospital and said, I think you sent this in error. And they said, no, we double checked, that's your money go ahead and cash it. And I said, let me be very clear, I do not want to cash this only to have to pay it back to you. I want your guarantee this will not be the case. And they assured me there was no error, so I cashed the check. Two weeks later, I got an overpayment notification in the mail demanding the money back. How am I even legally on the hook for someone else (or the entire accounting department in this case) being that stupid?
Meanwhile, we normal people have no recourse when scammers overcharge our credit cards or the like. *flips a table*
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This seems like the kind of thing they can only get away with when it's one on one and no one knows it's systematic. Hopefully this petition will go viral.
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