Social Security’s Family Benefits

You don’t have to be retired to receive Social Security. You read that right. In certain cases, qualified family members and dependents can receive benefits. Let’s look at some of those cases and consider how they may factor into your financial plan.

Benefits for Spouses

If you are (or were) married, you may be eligible to receive up to 50% of what your spouse receives in Social Security. This option does not reduce or change what your spouse receives. Instead, it can maximize your own benefit if your spouse was the primary breadwinner while you spent some or all of your working years raising children or otherwise outside the workforce.

Depending on your work history, applying for spousal benefits may make more financial sense than filing for Social Security individually.

Spousal benefits start upon your spouse’s full retirement age (FRA)—66 or 67 depending on their year of birth. As with regular benefits, spousal benefits will be reduced by 8% each year if you file early. However, unlike traditional benefits, the spousal version will never grow beyond 50% of the primary breadwinner’s FRA payment, even if you wait until age 70 to file.

Benefits for Children

If you become eligible for Social Security benefits while you still have minor children, they may be entitled to receive benefits of their own when you file. To receive these benefits, the child must have a parent who’s disabled or retired and entitled to Social Security or a parent who died after working long enough and paying Social Security taxes. In addition, the child must be either:

• Under age 18
• Under age 19 and a full-time elementary or high school student
• Age 18 or older and have a disability that began before age 22

These are potentially significant benefits. We advise you to consider taking full advantage of them if your children are eligible.

Benefits for Survivors

If your spouse passes away, you may be entitled to receive their Social Security benefit upon FRA, assuming the benefit exceeds what you would claim based on your own work history. A widow or widower is eligible for survivor benefits as long as the couple was married for at least nine months at the time of the spouse’s death. If the surviving spouse is already receiving the spousal benefits mentioned above, they will automatically switch to survivor benefits once the Social Security Administration is notified of the death.

One important note: If the partner passes away and the widow or widower remarries before age 60, they are not eligible to receive survivor benefits based on their first spouse’s income.

For more about Social Security, please read our special report Social Security’s Role in Your Retirement or listen to our “When Should You File for Social Security?” podcast.

Social Security eligibility varies based on your circumstances. If you have questions about your specific situation, please contact us to receive personalized advice. As The Planner You Can Talk To, we’re happy to help.

About Adviser Investments

Adviser is a full-service wealth management firm, offering investment management, financial and tax planning, managed individual bond portfolios, and 401(k) advisory services. We’ve been helping individuals, trustsA legal document that functions as an instruction manual to how you want your money managed and spent in your later years as well as how your assets should be distributed after your death. Assets placed in a trust are generally safe from creditors and can be sold by the trustee in short order, avoiding the lengthy and costly probate process., institutions and foundations since 1994. Adviser Investments and its subsidiaries have over 5,000 clients across the country and over $8 billion in assets under management. Our portfolios encompass actively managed funds, ETFsA type of security which allows investors to indirectly invest in an underlying basket of financial instruments (these may include stocks, bonds, commodities or other types of instruments). Shares in an ETF are publicly traded on an exchange, and the price of an ETF’s shares will fluctuate throughout the trading day (traditional mutual funds trade only once a day). For example, one popular ETF tracks the companies in the S&P 500, so buying a share of the ETF gets an investor exposure to all 500 companies in the index., socially responsible investments and tactical asset allocation strategies, and we’re experts on Fidelity and Vanguard mutual funds. We take pride in being The Adviser You Can Talk To. To see a full list of our awards and recognitions, click here, and for more information, please visit www.adviserinvestments.com or call 800-492-6868.