I’m not a lawyer, but if your pension or any other monthly payments have been partially or wholly confiscated due to alleged overpayments, whether accidental or otherwise (assuming they aren’t fraudulent overpayments), you may have at least 2 fairly cheap & quick legal options to possibly reduce that to PENNIES on the dollar . . .

1) File suit against the pension payer in your state/county Small Claims Court.  You don’t need a lawyer, usually costs about $200 or less to file using their standard “EZ” form & you usually get heard quickly, like within a few months.  Complain that you don’t owe anything beyond the Statute of Limitations for debts in your state & cite the State code/statute number that says that.  You can find your state’s statutes online.  In my state, it’s 3 years.  Don’t let them argue that it’s a Breach of Contract, which is an old excuse creditors use to try & get around the debt statutes, as that’s 6 years in my state.

The caveats to this are that in some States’ Small Claims Courts or District Courts, you can’t bring an “equitable action” against an entity.  An equitable action is one where you are asking for something to be done that isn’t monetary-related, per se, e.g., asking for a reduction of debt, or a reversal/recission of a particular condition that isn’t monetary in nature.  You may also be hemmed in by the monetary limits of the court.  In my state, it’s a $10,000 limit.  You may have to file in the next level of court, which in my state is Circuit Court, but even if you can’t do so on your own there (which you typically can do, it’s just that the standards are higher for your complaint as are the rules of evidence & civil procedures — I’ve represented myself more than once in Circuit Court & won), you can typically hire a hungry lawyer for around $1,000 upfront plus whatever he can collect in lawyer’s fees from the defendant when you win, which is all but assured under the debt statutes, but make sure he includes the awarding of legal fees to him in your lawsuit.

2) If you’re in dire straits & your credit rating & the status of your other debts/contracts or home rental/lease is not an issue, consider filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy.  You can not only ask for an injunction against the pension being withheld (it might get paid to the BK trustee temporarily, but your lawyer might can get it released to you as an undue hardship), you can also typically finance the legal fees as part of the deal, as you’ll have to have a lawyer in BK Court, and if your income is low, they will reduce your debts to a level you can afford to pay, which means they may make the creditors accept as little as 5% of what you owe as payment in full.  So if you owe $60,000 in overpayments for 12 years, you might succeed in getting that reduced to $15,000 in Small Claims Court or Circuit Court (the last 3 years, assuming your state’s debt statute is 3 years, less whatever they can’t collect beyond that date as time marches on until your court date comes, assuming they haven’t file a suit against you to “toll” the statute from the date they file & serve you), then you could go bankrupt against that & maybe get it reduced to $750 (5%) with payback over 5 years if your income is very low, which is like $30/mo payback with the legal fees of appx $1,000 added to the balance.

How does a 3% pension overpayment payback suit you?