Here’s a novel idea for helping fix Social Security: Stop sending piddling checks to perfectly healthy working Americans.

Last week, I received a check from Social Security for $29.30. My 75-year-old mother died in September. She had been receiving Social Security payments.

In the meeting to go over her will, my mother’s lawyer told my two sisters and me to expect Social Security to remove the last electronic deposit from my mother’s bank account.

It sounded reasonable enough. After all, my mother hadn’t lived through the month that the last payment was supposed to cover.

Then, six months later, this check for $29.30 arrives. I called my younger sister. She, too, had received a check for $29.30.

I called Social Security armed with my mother’s number, and after verifying through a series of questions that I am, indeed, my mother’s son, Al from the Social Security call center in Albuquerque said he had no idea why I received the check. Would I mind being put on hold while he investigated?

Of course not, I said, thinking that my call with Al was going to cost Social Security more than the check.

While Al investigated, soothing acoustic-guitar hold music played with a voice-over telling me, among other things, that, “some long-range changes need to be made so that the system remains solvent for future generations.”

Uh, yeah, I thought, like how about not cutting $29.30 checks to the middle-aged working children of dead former Social Security recipients?

As the hold music continued, I wondered if I would owe some sort of an inheritance tax on the check.

If so, I thought, it would knock the net amount down below enough to cover a cab ride home to just enough for a small round of beers.

Republicans and President Bush say the time to fix Social Security is now through private accounts. Democrats say there is no immediate crisis, and refuse to offer alternatives to Mr. Bush’s plan, though anyone this side of a coma knows any plan they would offer would involve raising taxes without cutting benefits.

Surely, however, we can all agree that any benefit that results in cutting a $29.30 check to a man in his peak earning years should be eliminated now.

As I waited, the hold loop voice-over explained that “some people mistakenly think that there is an account set up for them, an account used to pay their benefits. That isn’t true.”

Suddenly, Al from Albuquerque was back.

“Okay, I’ve got an answer for you,” he said. “Our system does what we call adjustments twice a year.”

Al explained that since my mother worked during the last year of her life, the amount to which she was entitled increased. But she died in September and Social Security made its adjustment in October. As a result, $87.90 in benefits was left unpaid.

“What they did was they paid her back for the year,” said Al. “They call them aero adjustments. That’s our word.”

“Does this happen all the time?” I asked.

“All the time,” said Al.

“But you’ve got three perfectly healthy high-earning people getting money from Social Security who certainly don’t deserve it at this point.” I said.

“In this case, it was an underpayment that was payable, and that’s why they paid it,” said Al.

“It just struck me as kind of funny that Social Security going broke by the year 2040 is all over the news and suddenly I get this mysterious check for $29.30, which means they’re giving money to people who don’t need it,” I said.

“Well, it is payable, and it was payable to her at that time. You have to be alive to be eligible, and the payment was for when she was alive,” said Al.

So there you have it. The amount was payable so they paid it.

It would be one thing if my sisters and I or my mother disputed her benefits, or if we had made a claim, but we hadn’t. My check for $29.30 was the result of a twice-annual routine adjustment.

Since there are no private Social Security accounts, my mother did not own the money that Social Security calculated was due her. As a result, my sisters and I should have no claim on it, even as heirs to her estate. That my mother died before the adjustment could be paid should have resulted simply in a termination of benefits and a nonpayment of the adjustment.

The mindless bureaucracy behind the check that Social Security sent to me makes it too ridiculous to cash.

Mr. Magill is business editor of The New York Sun.