Understanding spouse’s Social Security benefit

Understanding how your future retirement might affect your spouse is important.

Your spouse’s benefit amount could be up to 50% of your spouse’s full retirement age amount, if you are full retirement age when you take it. If you qualify for a benefit from your own work history and a spouse’s record, your own benefit is paid first.

You cannot receive spouse’s benefits unless your spouse is receiving his or her retirement benefits (except for divorced spouses). If you took your reduced retirement first while waiting for your spouse to reach retirement age, when you add spouse’s benefits later, your own retirement portion remains reduced, which causes the total retirement and spouse’s benefit together to total less than 50% of the worker’s amount. You can find out more about this at socialsecurity.gov/OACT/ quickcalc/spouse.html.

But if your spouse’s retirement benefit is higher than your retirement benefit, and he or she chooses to take reduced benefits and dies first, your survivor benefit will be reduced, but may be higher than what your spouse received.

If the deceased worker started receiving reduced retirement benefits before full retirement age, a special rule called the retirement insurance benefit limit may apply to the surviving spouse.

Knowing how your finances affect your spouse’s benefit can help avoid future impacts on your incomes. Use the benefits planners at socialsecurity.gov/planners.