Social Security Divorce Benefits MADE EASY

in this video i'm going to help make understanding social security divorce benefits easy coming up next on holy schmidt holy schmidt a long time ago the ssa decoupled a divorce spouse's right to receive spousal benefits from the existence of a marriage there were a lot of reasons for this but the primary one was that often the ex-spouse was not the primary earner in the relationship and was financially dependent on the now divorced partner and unfortunate circumstances prevented them from sharing any social security benefits that come from a lifetime of earnings together let me begin by acknowledging the emotion that sometimes comes with divorce and state that the benefit of the primary earner and current spousal benefit if that person is remarried is no way affected by the existence of a benefit paid to the divorce spouse this is not like alimony the social security administration is the one that's responsible for making the payments to the ex not the primary earner even though the benefits are in fact based on the work history of the primary earner this also means that the primary earner can't really contest this even if they wanted to there are two types of benefits that a divorce spouse can receive either the spousal benefit which is up to 50 percent of the primary insured's payment or survivor benefit which can be as much as 100 percent of the primary earners benefit i'll cover each in a minute but i need to discuss the gating item first and that is the length of marriage rule you need to be married for at least 10 years in order to qualify for these spousal benefits or ex-spousal benefits and survivor benefits as the case may be ten years is long enough according to the ssa no pun intended and more importantly it demonstrates that the marriage wasn't just put in place so that the ex can receive spousal benefits if you satisfy the 10-year rule then it comes down to if you remarried when you remarried and if you're still married i'll cover each of these off next but before i do please consider giving this video a thumbs up youtube uses the like button to drive results up when the title is searched and i want to help as many people as possible okay let's talk more about the length of marriage rules if you remarried before the age of 60 you don't qualify for divorce benefits unless you are no longer married if you're no longer married you qualify again noting that you may actually qualify twice under the length of marriage rules and you only get one of the two benefits it's of course the larger of the two the ten-year rule prevents gaming the system and if it didn't exist someone could literally get married at the beginning of the week get divorced at the end of the week and do this over and over again and have dozens maybe even hundreds of spousal benefits being paid out i personally know someone who's working on marriage number 11. you get the point there are a few questions about this that are regularly asked on my channel i'm going to get into those in just a second but if you're on instagram i just started an instagram page it's called the underscore schmidt list i'd love it if you went over there and followed me i put different information on instagram short bite-sized pieces of information about social security now back to the video the most common question asked relates to the normal gating item for spouses and filing for spousal benefits and that is can a divorce spouse file for social security if the primary earner has not yet filed for social security well if they were married the answer would be no but in the case of divorce if the marriage ended two years ago legally or longer then the divorced spouse does not have to wait for the primary insured to file for their social security benefits however the primary insured still needs to be age 62 or older for the divorce spouse to file for spousal benefits because they would have had to wait until the primary insured turned 62 if the marriage was still intact anyway if you have those points covered then the standard spousal rules apply to payment of benefits for the divorce spouse let's cover those off now point number one is that the divorce spouse can receive no more than 50 percent of the primary insured's benefit at full retirement age regardless of when the primary insured actually filed then it's just a matter of the ex-spouse claiming normal spousal benefits and the rules that apply to those for example at age 62 the spousal benefit is capped at 32.5 but at age 67 it's capped at 50 of the primary insurance full retirement age beyond age 67 it stays at 50 so there's no need to wait because your payment won't go up any further than 50 percent and you're just leaving money on the table and just to use this example if the primary earners payment at full retirement age was 2125. and the spouse or the divorce spouse's age is 62 they get 32.5 of 21.25 that equates to 690.62 cents at age 67 they get 50 of 21 25 and that equates to 1062 and 50 cents and you can see from the schedule that it is capped at 50 and and it scales up or down depending on the age it's also important to note that the divorce spouse can take their own primary insurance payment or the spousal benefit but they can't take both next up is the survivor benefit for divorce spouses first it's important to note that the same length of marriage rules apply for the survivor benefit as well the amount that the surviving ex-spouse receives requires a little bit of math at the time of death the surviving ex-spouse receives the higher of their own benefit or the survivor benefit but not both as i mentioned before then it comes down to two simple questions did the primary earner ever file for social security benefits and if so at what age did he or she file if the divorce spouse is 62 they're going to get a smaller amount than they would if they were say 67 which is full retirement age for most people right now this makes sense intuitively because if waiting means fewer payments but a larger amount for those payments for the primary insured that financial benefit should also transfer over to the divorce spouse as well take a look at this chart it explains how the haircut is determined depending on the age of the divorce spouse as it relates to the survivor benefit the next scenario is if the primary insured filed for social security at or beyond full retirement age again the spouse gets the full retirement age benefit adjusted for his or her age using the schedule that i just showed you a moment ago the final scenario is if the primary earner filed for social security before full retirement age now here's where we need to spend a little bit of time on the one hand social security has already started paying out the primary insured their social security benefits and those benefits were taken earlier than full retirement age on the other hand if the divorce spouse waits until full retirement age or waits longer approaching full retirement age there needs to be some recognition of this as well so the ssa has come up with this approach if the primary insured started drawing social security early then the spouse or the divorce spouse in this case it's the higher of the actual payment that the primary insured was receiving or 82 and a half percent of fra whichever is higher both of those would be adjusted to accommodate the age of the surviving spouse or divorce spouse the divorce benefit is not difficult if you break it down into bite-sized pieces but it does take a bit of time if you'd like to see more of me make sure you click subscribe and notifications below i post about twice a week also if you want to learn more about the spousal benefit when both partners are still together check out this video right here this goes into a lot of detail in the social security spousal benefit this is jeff schmidt thanks for watching

Channel: Holy Schmidt!

Views: 57,243

Keywords: social security divorcee benefits, social security divorcee benefits, divorce and social security benefits, social security spousal benefits divorce, social security ex spouse benefits, social security ex spouse death benefits, social security ex-spouse survivor benefits, social security spousal benefits, social security survivor benefits, social security benefits, social security, holy schmidt, SSA, social security adminstration, divorce benefits, ex-spouse benefits

Id: wqnVQwcZq_o

Length: 9min 29sec (569 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021