Social Security Q&A: After Remarriage, Can I Claim a Survivor’s Benefits on My First Spouse’s Record?
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 if it’s possible to claim a survivor’s benefit based on a first husband’s record after remarrying before age 60. The answer reviews the age threshold for remarrying but retaining eligibility to a survivor’s benefit and discusses potential alternative claiming strategies.
Question: I am 57 and thinking about an early retirement. My first husband is deceased. Can I draw benefits from him even though I have remarried? By taking early retirement due to poor health, can I do this at age 57?
Answer: Since you remarried before age 60, you can’t collect survivor benefits on your deceased first husband’s earnings record. Were you to get divorced, you could. The earliest you can collect your own retirement benefit is 62. That’s also the earliest you can collect your spousal benefit on your current husband’s earnings record. But to collect a spousal benefit, he has to be over 62.
Your total check if you do take your own retirement benefit early will be the sum of your reduced retirement benefit (reduced because you are taking it early) and your reduced excess spousal benefit, which is equal to half your spouse’s full retirement benefit less 100 percent of your full retirement benefit. If the excess spousal benefit is negative, it’s set to zero.
This is one of Social Security’s miserable gotchas: You take your own retirement benefit and expect to get a spousal benefit, but it doesn’t happen. Furthermore, as soon as you file for your retirement benefit, you’ll be forced to take your spousal benefit (assuming your spouse is at least 62).
One last point: if you are forced to stop working due to health reasons, you may qualify for disability benefits. As I wrote in a previous column, taking disability benefits does not preclude you from withdrawing them prior to their converting at full retirement age to retirement benefits. By withdrawing them now, you can collect a full spousal benefit starting at 66 and then wait until 70 to start collecting your own retirement benefit.
