Surviving Spouses Should Not Rely on Social Security Alone

Many Americans rely on Social Security for a significant portion of their retirement income. It’s a benefit most have paid into, and we expect that we will be paid accordingly. However, we cannot always rely on the Social Security Administration (SSA) to deliver as promised, and seniors often report problems, particularly when it comes to benefits for widowed spouses.

Unfortunately, the truth is none of us can afford to rely on the SSA to look out for our best interest, especially as a surviving spouse. Even though the federal government is well aware that widows and widowers have been chronically underpaid for years, the fact remains that the problem has never been properly addressed or resolved.

Surviving Spouse Benefits

To understand the issue at hand, you first need to know how surviving spouse Social Security benefits should work. When one spouse passes away, the other spouse can select one of two possible options. They can choose to receive their own earned retirement benefits, or choose to receive accrued benefits based on the work record of their deceased spouse. Typically, the survivor’s benefits would be equal to what the deceased spouse was being paid or what they would’ve been entitled to if they were collecting payments at the time of their death. 

However, the decision is not set in stone. The surviving spouse can select one type of benefit now and opt for the other type in the future. In other words, they can take advantage of the best benefit if it increases as the claim is delayed.

SSA Surviving Spouse Errors

If everything is handled correctly, the surviving spouse will receive the best possible benefits available after filing for Social Security. The SSA is responsible for investigating what type of benefits each individual is entitled to, or potentially entitled to, receive. This means it is their responsibility to tell the beneficiary when potentially higher benefits are available. 

Benefits for the surviving spouse are particularly important because they often become more vulnerable when the need arises to maintain the household on a lesser income — one Social Security benefit rather than two.

The trouble is, the SSA is not meeting this responsibility. According to a report issued by the Office of the Inspector General of the SSA (IG) in 2018, the SSA has consistently failed to inform seniors — especially in cases of surviving spouses — when there is a chance they are entitled to a higher benefit than the one they are receiving.

Since the 2018 findings, not enough has been done to resolve the issue. In fact, a more recent study found that nearly half of all widows and widowers have never been informed that they were eligible for higher benefits after the death of a spouse, amounting to over $530 million in cumulatively underpaid lifetime benefits. (1)

Take Control of Your Retirement Income

The SSA handles millions of applications every year, and yours is simply another file in a stack of many. For this reason, it is not in your best interest to depend on the SSA to offer reliable advice on maximizing your benefits.

Instead, you should speak with your financial advisor or familiarize yourself with strategies for effectively maximizing your Social Security benefits in retirement, especially noting that one spouse will more than likely move from getting two benefits down to one.

(1) https://oig.ssa.gov/audits-and-investigations/audit-reports/A-13-13-23109