Surviving Spouse Options

Hey, welcome to this quick little segment about Social Security and surviving spouse options. One thing that I would throw out there is the SSA.gov website is packed full of helpful links. And so if you’re at all kind of question and you want to start your education process, you can go there. It’s a great spot. First, one surviving spouse will get the higher of the two benefits.

Not both benefits. And so when it comes to planning of the eventual loss of a spouse, or maybe the spouse has already passed away, sitting down with some licensed professionals to walk through the planning and coordination is crucial. Number two hey, do you have longevity in your genes? If you do, when it comes to spousal surviving planning, looking at, well, hey, we have this higher income earner, maybe we want to look at delaying until they’re 70.

Get the most benefits because then if death were to happen, the surviving spouse would get that higher contractual lifetime income. Okay. So again, planning is so important when it comes to longevity in your genes. You have more options. Number three, if you’re a divorced spouse, but you’ve been married for at least ten years and you don’t get remarried before you’re 60, you and then a spouse passes away,

it’s definitely worth going into the Social Security office or sitting down with somebody like us to just say, okay, what are my options? What should I do? What’s the best way for me to claim in this situation? All right, so we get to help people ask the right questions as they go to the Social Security office, when they’re in those kind of situations where the divorce spouse has passed away and they and they want to know, what do we do next?

Okay. The fourth thing is, now here’s a little clarification, it’s a little confusing, but your survivor benefits don’t earn delayed credits after the full retirement age. And so if you have a spouse that passed away and you’re not claiming any benefits once it gets to their full retirement age, they don’t keep increasing. The benefit is they don’t get those extra credits.

And so again, it’s just, it comes back to if that happens or if there’s, you know, the planning for death, then sitting down and understanding all the ways is super important. And then finally your survivor tax planning. You know, a lot of times people don’t look at what happens if, for our tax plan, tax diversification in a situation where, a death happens.

And so sitting down, getting a plan is your best way to figure out Social Security strategies. Thanks for watching.