Social Security Survivor Benefits 101 - How It Works

in this video i break down social security survivor benefits for those unfamiliar with how they work coming up next on holy schmidt holy schmidt a few days ago one of our viewers angela l asked me urgently to post a video on social security survivor benefits she recently lost her husband and just needed to know what her options were normally i follow a video release schedule but i moved a few things around so that i could get this out asap angela i heard you loud and clear and this video will give you a solid start please make sure you chat with the social security administration and other trained professionals before you make any decisions all right let's get into it but before we do please make sure you click subscribe and notifications there's a lot going on with social security and i want to make sure that you're alerted the next time i post a video on this subject or a related subject i post about twice a week the name social security implies that there's a system in place to help those that don't have the ability to earn still be able to sustain themselves nothing would be more representative of that than a spouse whose partner has just passed their world has just changed and they're uncertain about what the challenges are that lie ahead many times they aren't the financial breadwinner of the family and to make matters worse oftentimes their partner was the one who handles the money so they don't know what they don't know but now they need to learn very fast the survivor benefit is one of the best ways to dull the financial pain of losing a partner and in my personal opinion one of the best offerings of the ssa this video breaks down the survivor benefit into two parts part one is how to qualify and part two looks at how much the survivor receives based on a couple of different factors let's start off with how to qualify for survivor benefits the social security administration and countless politicians have made in their infinite wisdom qualifying for survivor benefits pretty easy if you are married for nine months or longer you qualify for survivor benefits as long as you were still married when your partner departed the nine month rule is waived if the survivor is a parent of a joint child either natural or adopted or if the death was the result of an accident if you meet those requirements you're good to go the next question is how much does the survivor actually receive this is where it gets a little more complicated first it's important to note that the surviving spouse gets the hire of their own benefit or the survivor benefit but not both let's begin by talking about the primary insured and their social security benefit when the primary earner the primary insured passes one of two things has happened they've either filed for social security benefits or they have not let's start off with what happens if they've not yet filed this often happens when the deceased was not of filing age meaning less than 62 years old or they were a filing age but they were waiting because they wanted to get a higher benefit in either case the rights of the survivor are the same they get the deceased's full retirement age benefit adjusted for their current age this is where everybody gets confused so i'm going to use an example and make this really obvious let's assume that the deceased was 63 and his or her spouse was 33. it happens at age 33 the surviving partner couldn't draw on survivor benefits simply because their partner had passed if they actually could they would be getting retirement benefits for 60 or 70 years in many cases because of this there's a second calculation that needs to be done and this is a calculation that haircuts the full retirement age benefit based on the age of the surviving spouse by the way if you like this video please make sure that you hit the like button youtube uses the thumbs up as its algorithm to drive a video in the search results higher and i want to help as many people as i can now back to the video now let's change the facts a bit and say that the deceased was 63 but the spouse is 59 as you can see from the chart the spouse would have to wait at least a year because you can't claim survivor benefits until you're 60 with the exception of those that are disabled you can claim survivor benefits at age 50 in that case this is the survivor multiplier chart that we're going to be using i will also put the chart in the description below so you don't have to start and stop the video if the survivor filed for survivor benefits at age 60 they would receive 71.5 of the deceased's full retirement age benefits even though the deceased passed at age 63. if the full retirement age benefit of the deceased was twenty one hundred dollars and the surviving spouse filed at age sixty they would get seventy one and a half percent of twenty one hundred dollars which is fifteen hundred and two dollars if the survivor was age 65 they'd get 91.86 percent of the full retirement age benefit or 1929 dollars and six cents and if the surviving spouse was full retirement age themselves they'd receive 100 percent of the fra which is 2100 so the math is simple it's just the percentage haircut based on the age of the surviving spouse multiplied times 100 of the deceased's full retirement age benefit but what if the deceased was receiving social security benefits but they waited until full retirement age before they applied for those benefits it's exactly the same it's a percentage schedule based on the age of the surviving spouse times 100 of the fra benefit also really important the surviving spouse cannot get more than 100 of the deceased's full retirement age benefit so there's no need to wait past full retirement age in the example we're using here that's age 67 because waiting does not equal more after age 67. and the last example what if the deceased filed for social security before full retirement age in the first example there was no telling when the deceased was going to file for social security so the ssa gave them the benefit of the doubt and they benchmarked the survivor benefit based on the deceased's full retirement age benefit in the second example the deceased actually filed for social security at forward hammered age so there was no question what the benchmark was in this next example let's assume that the deceased drew social security at age 63 and passed away at age 66 so he or she drew social security for three years which meant that they had received 75 percent of their full retirement age benefit if the full retirement age benefit was 2100 the deceased was receiving fifteen hundred seventy five dollars since the deceased crystallized the payment at seventy five percent of fra does that mean that the surviving spouse haircuts off of that number no fortunately not there's something called a widow's limit which provides the survivor with the larger of eighty two and a half percent of the fra payment or one hundred percent of the actual payment itself and this is a really important distinction if you look at this chart about midway through age 62 it makes no sense for the survivor to wait any longer to file for survivor benefits because the survivor will not get a dime more by way so in this example you would never wait you would file at 62 and a half because you're just leaving money on the table by waiting your payment won't go up anymore if you like this video and you want to see more of me please make sure you click subscribe and notifications i post about two or three times a week also check out this video on the average net worth of a 62 year old it's one of my more popular videos you're going to be surprised at the numbers that you see this is jeff schmidt thanks for watching

Channel: Holy Schmidt!

Views: 228,538

Keywords: social security survivors benefits, social security, social security survivor benefits, social security survivor benefit, financial planning for retirement, retirement planning, financial planning, social security benefits, survivor benefit, social security benefits for divorced spouse, survivor benefits, survivor benefit plan, survivor benefit plan explained, survivor benefits and working

Id: g5jzv95WNTw

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021