Social Security Spousal Benefits: Another Key To The Social Security Decision

When can a husband or wife begin collecting his or her Social Security spousal benefit? A wife can begin collecting Social Security spousal benefits only after the following requirements are satisfied:

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

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

To offer an illustration, if the wife is 62 and the husband is 60, the wife can begin receiving benefits calculated on her income, but she is unable to collect based on her husband's income until he becomes 62 and starts receiving his own benefits.

Then again, if the wife is age 66 and her spouse is only 62, then the wife can start receiving calculated on her husband's income (remember, the husband needs to sign up for his Social Security benefits before his spouse can collect based upon his income).

In the cases stated above, the wife can begin collecting benefits calculated on her own income at age 62 (assuming she's got as a minimum forty quarters of earnings and also qualifies for benefits on her own), then she can switch to one half of her husband's benefit as soon as her husband qualifies for Social Security.

A couple of items to look at before applying for benefits:

If a wife applies for her Social Security spousal benefit as determined by her husband's income when she attains full retirement age (age 66 for folks retiring now), then she will collect half of her husband's primary insurance amount (PIA). On the other hand, if she starts receiving benefits at age 62, then her benefit will be reduced to just 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 do not include delayed credits. Also, it won't benefit the wife if the husband waits to apply for benefits because she won't get any boost in benefits that he gets by waiting to receive benefits.

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

You can collect Social Security spousal benefits determined by an ex-spouse's income if you were married for a minimum of ten years and you are also at this time unmarried. In case you have more than one ex-spouse which you qualify regarding spousal benefits, you'll get the maximum benefit you are entitled to. One edge that divorced spouses have over married spouses is the fact that a divorced spouse doesn't need to wait around for a former husband to apply for benefits as long as the pair is divorced for a minimum of 2 yrs when she applies.

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

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