Help with mom's financial frustrations

I am making this GoFundMe mostly for my mom but a little bit of it would go towards helping us with our moving costs as we are finally moving closer to the town centre after living in a very unpleasant home for the past year.

Quick summary: Our social insurance institution/financial assistance institution known as Kela is demanding my mom pay them back for a year's worth of her receiving Finnish national pension after she acquired a lump sum back payment from the US - she is receiving widow's benefit and was eligible for a lump sum payment for the previous year after applying. The lump sum payment triggered Kela to demand back payment for the previous year of Finnish national pension they had been paying her. We think that is ridiculous as she had not been in the process of the US widow's benefit until early-mid 2024. Without the Finnish national pension from mid 2023 until mid 2024, she would not have had enough income to pay for anything - groceries, utilities, rent. That is our frustration with the whole decision process.

A longer explanation follows:

Our social insurance institution which is known as Kela has been giving my mom the run around for the latter half of this year. They told her sometime last year that she needs to inquire about her retirement from the United States, as she spent 30 years living and working there and is entitled to retirement even though we moved to Finland over a decade ago.

She did as asked, and after a back and forth of letters and calls, finally received word this year that she would be entitled first to this thing called Survivor's Benefit or Widow's Benefit:

from here:

https://www.ssa.gov/survivor/eligibility#:~:text=Spouses%20and%20ex-spouses,if%20you%20have%20a%20disability).

My dad passed when I was 18 - I am 36 now for reference - and my mom has not remarried so she is eligible for this benefit.

She got a lump sum as they paid her retroactively for the past year.

At her request I did remove the totals, but it was a good bit of money. She spent the first day crying because she knew it wouldn't be long until Kela came after her about this, because getting lump sums from any source of income other than them usually has them coming around throwing accusations and demanding back payment. Which is what happened. For like, maybe the first two months after this, because I believe she received this payment in June, July and August were pretty chill. We didn't have to stress about grocery money or rent for once and she FINALLY was able to go get new dentures. She got her first pair about 4 years ago and the dental technician in the previous town we lived in was rushed and did not listen to her when she was trying to describe the fit. She's struggled with them since because they fit improperly (they did not align with the roof of her mouth, and left blisters when she ate).

She is retired now so Kela does not cover medical expenses for her anymore. Because of that, she's had to just try and deal with improper dentures for the past four years, but with this widow's benefit she was actually able to go to a private dental clinic we have here known as Mehiläinen (which is a health care company I personally adore because they are so patient and understanding). She met with a technician who was aghast that my mom had dealt with the old ones for so long and how poorly they were crafted.

She's had these new dentures for a couple of months now and she can eat normally, without pain, AND as a bonus is over the moon with the shape because they do look like her old teeth!! It's really cute.

She had a couple of other medical things to take care of, thankfully nothing serious, but again having to pay out of pocket because Kela does not cover her under the national health care due to her being retired, it's been a bit pricy. She was glad to get these long-needed visits taken care of though. It was nice for a while.

Then Kela got paperwork of her eligibility for the widow's benefit and the total of the backpay and did what they always do - come knocking on the door demanding repayment of THEIR pension.

In the time that the benefit has been paid retroactively, since summer last year, she had been getting the Finnish National Pension as a means of income because without it, she wouldn't have any other source of income and we obviously need money to pay rent and utilities and such.

Kela knew this whole time the process of the inquiry about her US retirement was undergoing. We had no idea they would demand for her to pay them back for the past year that she received the Finnish pension because, to us, it makes no sense for them to ask back the money we need to live.

They feel otherwise and sent her a demand of payment.

and translation of this section:

We were really frustrated at this point and managed to find a local lawyer so my mom could go in and ask questions about how they can demand this, what our options were, how to appeal. The lawyer was super helpful and helped mom write out a very concise appeal response, and my mom also included all her recent medical and dental receipts to support her appeal.

We heard back and not surprisingly, Kela denied the appeal.

translation of this section:

This has been a lengthy, tiring, and quite frankly unfair situation that my mom has been dealing with for the past few months. We both still think it is really unreasonable for them to demand back payment when she is ENTITLED to Finnish national pension and she NEEDED it because without it, she had no income whatsoever and how do they expect one person to shoulder the entire burden of rent, utilities, groceries, appointments, etc? But that's a whole rant for another time.

Sorry for such a lengthy story section but I wanted to include as much information as I could because we are definitely asking for a pretty substantial amount of money to help with this Kela situation.

The main reason I wanted to make this GoFundMe is for helping my mom pay off this amount as quickly as possible. She does have a payment plan set up at the moment - 130 euros per month for the next THREE YEARS. That is a HUGE amount taken away from her monthly income that will negatively affect our day to day, and is why I want to help her pay this off as soon as possible so it isn't this large expense hanging over our heads.

March 2025 addition: This section here is no longer needed as I mentioned in some updates, but I wanted to keep all the original information available just for transparency's sake!

There is a secondary set of expenses I was also hoping to cover with this GoFundMe - we are planning to move in a couple of weeks to be closer to the town centre as basically everything we need as well as medical appointments are located there and we currently live 13km (8 miles) away. We do not have a car and the public transit in Finland is generally pretty great, but because we live out in the countryside away from town, the only bus line does not offer us as much access to town as we typically need.

We will need help with moving. The quote from the moving company I received to help us from door to door is 590 euros. Yes. That is so much for moving within the same city, trust me, I know!

and translation:

Okay, I think that's about all I can think of to add here. Anything will help us as I genuinely just want to ease some of this financial burden off my mom because she's been stressed for months and there hasn't really been anything I can do myself.

But at least this is one thing I can try. I love her dearly and I just want to help her as she's helped me all these years. We've been a team, even moreso since my dad passed when I was in high school, and all I really want is just to make life even a small bit easier for someone who has been my rock for so many decades.

Thank you in advance and any donations we get will genuinely help us more than I can express even in this long story section.