Social Security Q&A: How Will Taking Early Retirement Benefits Later Affect Widow’s Benefits?
Social Security may be your largest or one of your largest assets. How you manage it, by deciding which benefits to collect and when, can make an absolutely huge difference to your lifetime benefits. And those with the highest past covered earnings have the most to gain from maximizing their Social Security.
I’ve been answering questions and writing columns about Social Security each week for the past two years on PBS NEWSHOUR’s website. The editors at Forbes asked me to post a Q&A each day from those columns. To see all my columns, please go to my software company’s site, www.maximizemysocialsecurity.com, and click More Press below the WSJ quote.
Today’s question asks how a survivor’s benefits will be subsequently affected after first taking an early reduced retirement benefit. The answer relates how the amount of the survivor benefit is dependent not only on the age of the surviving spouse, but also the age of the decedent spouse as well as whether, and when, the decedent spouse filed for retirement benefits.
Question: If a wife starts collecting her Social Security benefits at age 62, she would collect 75 percent of her full retirement benefit. If her spouse dies and is eligible for survivor benefits, would she collect 100 percent or 75 percent of his full retirement benefit?
Answer: As described in this column, if the decedent spouse took retirement benefits earlier than his full retirement age, depending on when the widow collects, the survivor benefit may be less than the decedent husband’s full retirement benefit, equal to or greater than the benefit he was receiving, or 82.5 percent of the husband’s full retirement benefit.
