[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] SSN info for appling for your Relatives after death

[Eveline Tiefenbach]

THOUHGT I WOULD ALL LET YOU KNOW ABOUT TRYING TO RECIEVE INFO FOR REALTIVES THAT HAVE PASSED; THAT THERE WAS VALUE INFO TO FIND - LINK FOR MORE INFO  http://megansmolenyak.posterous.com/

Social Security Administration extends FOIA restriction to 100 years

Unfortunately, it’s now official. I have been ordering Social Security 
applications for several decades, and have found them especially valuable over 
the last decade for assisting with my Army cases. A few years ago, I noticed 
that they were starting to block out names of parents on the applications – 
which is very unfortunate since that’s the primary reason for ordering them. 
Still, the restriction seemed to pertain to applications for those born from 
1940 or so on, and the explanation was that their parents could still be alive. 
So though I wasn’t keen on it, I could understand the logic.


But recently – without any announcement – the Administration extended the 
restriction to 100 years – that is, 100 years from the birth of the applicant, 
so you can now only obtain this record in an unaltered state for those born 
prior to 1912. This letter is in response to one I wrote where I explained how 
it would negatively impact the ability to locate soldiers’ family members and 
that the parents whose privacy was suddenly being protected would have to be 
somewhere on the order of 120 to 150 years old, if alive. I can apparently 
receive the full application if I can prove that the parents are deceased, but 
1) that’s a catch-22 since that’s exactly why I usually ordered the document in 
the first place, and 2) many of my cases are for foreign-born soldiers who 
immigrated to the U.S. so I would have to seek death certificates from places 
ranging from Finland to the Philippines.


For similar reasons, this perplexingly long restriction will obviously also 
affect the 40% of Americans of Ellis Island heritage, which is also regrettable 
as this was the best tool for learning the names of the parents of immigrants so 
you could then extend your research overseas. I’m very disappointed in this 
decision and truly can’t grasp what has caused the Administration to put such a 
severe restriction in place – far in excess of that of most states that have 
limits on death certificate access – but I wanted to at least let the 
genealogical community know as it would be unfortunate for others to spend money 
needlessly. Because this policy was never announced, I have spent money on four 
requests ($27 or $29 each) for people born in the 19-teens, only to receive 
documents of no value to me. You might want to let your friends in the 
genealogical community know.


Eveline Tiefenbach