Читать книгу Social Security For Dummies - Peterson Jonathan, Jonathan Peterson - Страница 35

Social Security benefits for spouses are part of the economic foundation of older households. Under the rules, a spouse may get up to half of the full benefit given to the retired breadwinner.

The spouse may qualify at 62, but benefits are reduced for every month they’re claimed before the spouse reaches full retirement age. If a spouse takes spousal benefits at 62, and the full retirement age is 67, the amount comes to 32.5 percent of the breadwinner’s full retirement payment. If the spouse waits until full retirement age, the amount comes to 50 percent of the breadwinner’s full payment.

A noteworthy exception is when the spouse is caring for a child who also qualifies. In this case, the spouse gets 50 percent of the breadwinner’s full payment regardless of the spouse’s age. (For a deeper exploration of spousal benefits, including issues for spouses who qualify based on their own working records, see Chapter 9.)

The reduction for early collections of the spousal benefit works like this: Benefits are reduced by of 1 percent for each month the benefit is claimed before full retirement age — up to 36 months before full retirement age. If a spouse claims the benefit earlier than 36 months ahead of full retirement age, the benefit is further cut by a factor of of 1 percent per month.

Here’s an example: Max has just retired at 66 and begun collecting a full retirement benefit of $1,600 per month. Olivia, his wife, who is 63, qualifies for a spousal benefit of half that amount — $800 — if she waits until her full retirement age of 66 to claim it. But that’s three years away. If Olivia collects the spousal benefit now, Social Security reduces her benefit by 25 percent, to $600. (Unlike the basic retirement benefit, which continues to increase up to age 70 if you don’t claim it at full retirement age, spousal benefits don’t grow after the spouse reaches full retirement age.)

Social Security offers an online calculator that can tell spouses what percentage of the breadwinner’s full retirement they’ll get, depending on the age at which they begin collecting a spousal benefit. Go to www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc/spouse.html to use this handy tool.

You may also earn benefits that cover your dependent children if you die, retire, or become disabled. Suppose an older dad has a child. If the father begins to collect Social Security retirement benefits while his child is still young enough to qualify, the child may receive as much as half the father’s benefit (75 percent of the benefit if the father dies).

Social Security may make no distinction among biological children, adopted children, and stepchildren. For that matter, a dependent grandchild may also qualify. (See Chapter 10 for more details on child and family benefits.)

Say Johnny is a securities lawyer married to a much younger woman. When Johnny hits 60, his 30-year-old wife, Larissa, gives birth to a daughter, Janniva. Johnny plugs away at the law firm for six more years and then retires at 66, claiming a Social Security retirement benefit of $2,466. Janniva qualifies for a child benefit of $1,233 (half of her father’s full retirement benefit), and she gets that benefit as a dependent child until she turns 18. If Johnny dies at age 66, Larissa can also get a benefit, even though she’s only 36 years old. As a young surviving spouse who is caring for the deceased worker’s dependent child, she gets a monthly payment of $1,850. The SSA applies different time limits to some of the family benefits that involve children. In the preceding example, the money Larissa gets as Janniva’s mother ends when her daughter turns 16.