Not a big deal, don't make it one!

This is directed mostly to the press, but also may be informative to others.

Deceased actor Roy Scheider still gives Barack Obama credit, and it's a big problem.

Scheider gave $50 to Barack Obama on March 10 -- problem is, he's been dead since February 10. The 50-spot was an automatic, monthly credit card donation -- which lived on, even though Roy didn't.

A spokesperson for the campaign told the L.A.Times they will no longer take from the dead.

This does not mean that the Obama people were trying to pull a fast one. Auto pay systems are, shocker, automated. They run through their program once a month and process all the card numbers that are stored.

They may spit out a report before (or after) of people who have a card about to expire so they can be contacted for updates and they will spit out a report at the end of all the cards that were declined or rejected. Then, and only then do you know something is wrong.

Depending on the set up there may be a stop payment date, if it was for a set pledged amount for example, once you reach the amount it stops. Or like your utilities it may keep on charging you monthly until you ask it to stop.

In the case of declines or rejects it may also stop any future charges until the account can be confirmed again.

In any case, if Roy's family had not yet canceled his cards/accounts it would process with no red flags. This is super common and very much the norm.

The family can dispute the charge with either the vendor (in this case the campaign) or with the card with the obvious reason that he was deceased and the didn't know about the auto pays the deceased may have had set up before their demise. Again, this is common.

I would imagine the campaign has hundreds, maybe thousands of auto pays that are for small amounts like this so I don't blame them for not knowing before the charge happened.