Читать книгу Social Security For Dummies - Peterson Jonathan, Jonathan Peterson - Страница 37

Social Security isn’t just about retirement — it also protects Americans when a family breadwinner dies. You can think of these protections as life insurance that helps families carry on when their livelihood has been shattered. Social Security pays benefits to almost 2 million children whose parents have died. Survivor benefits also go to more than 4 million widows, widowers, and elderly parents who had depended on the deceased worker for financial support.

Benefits may be higher for survivors than for those who depend on a living retiree. In cases of multiple beneficiaries, the family maximum may kick in, limiting payments to about 150 percent to 180 percent of the late worker’s primary insurance amount (see the nearby sidebar “Social Security’s benchmark for benefits: The primary insurance amount”). When that happens, benefits going to dependents are reduced proportionately.

In this section, I fill you in on who qualifies for survivor benefits and how the breadwinner may earn those benefits before he or she dies.

Besides the regular, recurring benefit payments (discussed in this section), Social Security pays a one-time lump-sum death benefit of $255. This payment typically goes to the surviving spouse after the death is reported to the SSA. If the survivor wasn’t living with the deceased spouse, the survivor must still be eligible for benefits on the late spouse’s earnings record in order to receive the death payment. In cases where there is no surviving spouse, payments may go to a child. The key for a child’s eligibility is that the surviving child qualifies for benefits based on the deceased parent’s record at the time of death.