Social Security Spousal Benefit: What Benefits Is Your Spouse Eligible For?

Social Security Spousal Benefit: What Benefits Is Your Spouse Eligible For?

Can a non-working wife receive Social Security benefits determined by her husband's earnings? Yes, a husband or wife can collect a Social Security spousal benefit if the following requirements are met:

1. The spouse applying for the spousal benefit must be at least age 62

2. The husband needs to be eligible for benefits, consequently he should also be at least age 62. What's more, the husband needs to actually sign up for Social Security retirement benefits for his wife to receive benefits based on his earnings. The husband may then decide to postpone receiving benefits. This course of action is called "file and suspend".

To offer an illustration, if the wife is 62 and the husband is 61, the wife can start receiving benefits based on her income, but she is unable to receive benefits based on her husband's income until he becomes 62 and applies for benefits.

Then again, if the wife is 66 and her spouse is only 62, then the wife can start receiving as determined by her husband's income (again the husband needs to submit an application for his Social Security before his spouse will be able to collect based upon his income).

In the examples stated above, the wife can start collecting benefits calculated on her own income as soon as she turns 62 (assuming she's got as a minimum forty quarters and also qualifies for benefits on her own), then change to 1 / 2 her husband's benefit once her husband qualifies for Social Security.

Some items to think about before applying for benefits:

If a wife applies for her Social Security spousal benefit calculated on her husband's income when she becomes full retirement age (age 66 for folks retiring now), then she'll collect half of her husband's primary insurance amount (PIA). On the other hand, if she applies at age 62, then her benefit will only be 35% of her husband's PIA.

It doesn't help the spouse to wait until after reaching full retirement age to apply for benefits, as spousal benefits don't include delayed credits. On top of that, it won't benefit the wife if the husband delays applying for benefits because she won't receive any rise in benefits that he will get by waiting to receive benefits.

When a spouse gets to full retirement age and becomes qualified to receive a spousal benefit or her own benefit, she may apply for the spousal benefit now and hold off collecting her own benefit in order to accumulate delayed credits on her own benefit.

A person can collect Social Security spousal benefits calculated on an ex-spouse's income if you were married for at least ten years and you are at present unmarried. For people with more than one ex-spouse which you meet the criteria pertaining to spousal benefits, you'll get the highest benefit you are entitled to. One benefit that divorced spouses have over married spouses is the fact that a divorced spouse does not need to wait around for a former husband to start collecting benefits as long as the pair is divorced for not less than two years when she applies.

As a final point, the Social Security retirement system is gender neutral, so even though this article has assumed that the wife is generally the one applying for spousal benefits, if the wife makes more money than the husband, the husband can sign up for Social Security benefits based on his wife's earnings.

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