Higher fee, new SSA website

So… you want a copy of that ancestor’s application for a Social Security number, do you?

You can get it.

But it’s going to cost you more than it used to, and there’s a new web page that the Social Security Administration wants you to use to order it.

Welcome to the process of ordering an SS-5 form, 2024 style.

In the four years since The Legal Genealogist last addressed this,¹ the fee has gone from $21 to $28 for a copy of a Numident and $30 for a copy of the SS-5 form itself² and the Social Security Administration has migrated these requests — made under the Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)³ — from an older website to a new one called the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Public Access Link (or PAL for short).

So… let’s recap what this form is and why we want it, then go over the new ordering system.

What the SS-5 is

The SS-5 is a form now held by the Social Security Administration that’s generally known as an Application for a Social Security Number. The example below is my grandfather’s SS-5 form from 1937⁴:

Like most of these forms used from the very beginning of the Social Security system in 1935, this form required a number of key pieces of information, including:

• First, middle and last name
• Present mailing address
• Age at last birthday
• Date of birth
• Place of birth (including city, county and state)
• Father’s full name
• Mother’s full maiden name
• Race or color
• Date and signature

At various times, an applicant may have also had to specify his or her full name at birth, including maiden name if a married female, the name of the current employer and employer’s address, and other information.

So getting a copy of this form is almost always worth it. The information on the SS-5 form was usually provided by the applicant, and so is often the best source of information about what the applicant knew about his or her own birth and parentage.

The worst we’ll get is information supplied by an employer that filled out the form from its employees’ records and had them sign it — which adds another layer of possible human error, or the lie the applicant told for whatever reason. In my family, for example, a cousin on my father’s side listed her grandparents as her parents to avoid having to admit that she’d been born out of wedlock. But even that information is worth having.

Whose record we can get

We can get a copy of the Social Security Number Application (Form SS-5) of any person if:

• The person whose record we’re asking for is living and has given us written consent to get it⁵; or
• The person whose record we’re asking for is deceased, and we can prove it; or
• The person whose record we’re asking for was born more than 120 years ago.⁶

And because of a change in the law in 2013, there’s one more limit: if we’re asking for the record of a deceased person, that person must have died more than three full calendar years before the date of our request.⁷

What exactly to order

There are two forms we might get from the Social Security Administration: a photocopy of an original application for a Social Security card (SS-5); and a computer extract of the Social Security application (Numident). The SS-5 costs $30, the Numident costs $28, and there’s an additional $10 fee if for any reason you need a certified copy.

We want the first one. The computer extract often doesn’t have all the same information as the SS-5, it’s not a copy of the original anyway, it won’t have the original signatures, yadda yadda yadda. And you can probably get the same information that’s on the Numident from the National Archives — do a search at the Archives’ Access to Archival Databases series for SSA records.

Always always always pony up the extra dollars and order the SS-5 form rather than the Numident.

How to order the SS-5

To order a copy of an SS-5, we’ve always had to make a formal request under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) using Form SSA-771. For years, we’ve been able to do it online or by mail.

There’s no change in the mail ordering system: download Form SSA-711, fill it out and send it off with a check, albeit now for that higher $30 amount.

It’s the online ordering system that’s different. SSA FOIA requests are now being handled through the SSA’s new FOIA Public Access Link (PAL) web page.

Here are the how-to directions for this site:

1. Head over to the FOIA PAL website. Accept the Privacy Statement if you’re confronted with one — the agency can’t handle your request if you don’t agree to give it your info.

2. You will need to log in with an authenticated identity through an official government system (ROME, Login.gov, or ID.Me). None of these are explained directly on the FOIA page, but clicking on the blue words Sign In will take you to a screen where you can either log in if you have an account or create one with Login.gov if you don’t. (If you want to read more about Login.gov, head over to its webpage and it will give you a full explanation and you can create an account while you’re there.) Note that these systems all use two factor authentication so be prepared for that.

3. Once you’re logged in, you’ll need to agree to the TOS and then full out all your personal info for the request. This is your info, not the info of the person whose SS-5 you’re requesting. Note that requester category is going to be Other. After submitting that form, you should get a Sign In Successful screen.

4. Once you get to the Sign in Successful screen, you need to click on the Submit Request link in the menu bar. Scroll down and begin filling in that form. Make sure to READ THE DIRECTIONS THERE. It tells you, for example, that you will need to select DEBS in the Action Office field.

5. Under Request Type, choose Decedent SS-5.

6. Under Requester Category, again choose Other.

7. Delivery mode gives you options for email, mail or PAL, which appears to be a link to a download.

8.Payment mode should be either Pay.gov or credit card. If you choose check or money order, you might as well make the request by mail in the first place.

9. In the Decedent Numident/SS-5 Request field, fill in everything you know about the person whose SS-5 you’re requesting.

10. The Shipping Address field has a quirk: it wants you to enter something in the Street2 field even if you’re using a regular residential address. I simply entered the word none and it worked just fine.

11. The Request Information box reminds you not to use this for other types of records, and gives you a place to add information and any proofs in the form of attached documents. For an SS-5 for someone born in 1926, for example, I attached a death certificate and added a description of the death dates of the parents and their social security numbers for verification.

12. Make sure to say you’ll pay for this in the Fee Information field. The default maximum authorized amount is $100; I don’t ever bother changing that — the system will take you to a payment screen and it charges $30 for the document, period.

Now… I want to go back to that Request Information field, the one where you can add a description and attach documents. This is really important — it could be a critical part of your request, and here’s why.

First of all, remember that SSA “will not disclose information about any person in our records unless: 1) the number holder has provided written consent or we have acceptable proof of his or her death; or 2) the number holder is at least 100 years old and we have acceptable proof of his or her death; or 3) the number holder is more than 120 years old.”⁸

Generally speaking, the SSA has in the past accepted the fact that the person’s name appears on the Social Security Death Master File (what we know as the Social Security Death Index or SSDI) as proof that the person is deceased. But not all deaths have been included in the public version of the SSDI.⁹ Moreover, the public SSDI hasn’t been updated in years — and it’s just not clear whether the SSA will look to its own records instead of the public version to determine whether someone is deceased.

So with newer deaths, deaths of younger persons, and as to anyone whose name we can’t find in the public SSDI, we should supply proof of death and that means sending acceptable proofs which may include:

• a copy of a public record of death; or
• a statement of death from a funeral director; or
• a statement of death by the attending physician or the superintendent, physician, or intern of the institution where the person died; or
• a copy of the coroner’s report of death or the verdict of the coroner’s jury; or
• a copy of an official report of death or finding of death made by an agency or department of the U.S. which is authorized or required to make such a report or finding in the administration of any law of the U.S.; or
• an obituary with sufficient identifying information.¹⁰

That same set of privacy rules applies to the applicant’s parents’ information as well — and that’s often what we really want. So we may need to submit something to show that they’re dead or were born long ago enough to be presumed dead, too. The types of proofs I’ve used on occasion for this purpose include an obituary of the person saying the parents predeceased the person; death records of the parents; tombstone photos; and a census record showing the ages of the parents.

All types of file formats can be attached here — images, PDFs and more.

Once you’ve gotten everything the way you think you want it, you’ll hit the submit button and you’ll be redirected to the website to pay online. You’ll get an email confirmation of the document request and an email confirmation of the payment. I also do a screen print of the on screen confirmation just in case.

And with luck in two to six weeks you’ll get what you’re looking for.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Ordering the SS-5: 2024 style,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 30 Jan 2024).

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