Welcome to Ask Money Talks News, a series answering financial questions submitted by Money Talks Newsletter subscribers.
In this installment, we’re talking about Social Security benefit options for spouses who earned less money than their partners.
A subscriber asks Money Talks News:
“I am 70 and my husband is 72. He receives more than twice the amount of Social Security as I do. I filed at 67 and he filed at 70. Can I switch to receive half of his benefit, or do I have to stay with my lesser benefit claimed at 67?
Signed,
Missing $200 a month”
If your husband’s Social Security amount is higher than yours and you have been married at least 10 years, you might be eligible for up to half of the Social Security amount he would have received at his full retirement age. (For most people, that age ranges from 66 to 67, depending on when they were born.)
When you apply for Social Security retirement benefits, you are required to apply for both your retirement benefit (which is based on your own earnings record) and your spousal benefit (which is based on your spouse’s earnings record) at the same time. This is known as deemed filing and is supposed to result in you receiving the larger of the two benefit amounts for which you’re eligible.
So you’ll want to contact the Social Security Administration to determine if you have already applied under the deemed filing rule.
Unfortunately, you cannot receive half the amount that your husband currently receives because he waited until age 70 to file for his Social Security benefit.
Spousal benefits are only worth up to half of your spouse’s full retirement amount— meaning the Social Security benefit amount that your husband would have received if he claimed his benefits at his full retirement age.
How to Ask Money Talks News
You can submit a question for the Ask Money Talks News series for free. Here’s how:
- Hit “reply” to the Money Talks Newsletter.
- Change the email subject line to Ask Money Talks News.
- Put your question in the email. Make sure to include enough detail for us to fully understand your question and any relevant context — but keep it all under 50 words.
- Hit “send.”
We can’t answer every question we receive, of course, but we do prioritize questions from Money Talks News members and questions that apply to a majority of our audience.
