Читать книгу Social Security For Dummies - Peterson Jonathan, Jonathan Peterson - Страница 48

For most benefits, you need to achieve what the SSA calls fully insured status to gain full protection. But the SSA has a kind of safety net for children and parents raising children, which it calls currently insured status. This status allows you to earn certain benefits for family members even when you haven’t met the usual earnings requirements. You’re considered “currently insured” if you’ve attained at least six Social Security credits in a period of 3 years and 3 months (13 quarters), ending with death, disability, or retirement. Benefits are likely to be modest, and they’re restricted to children, as well as a spouse who is caring for a dependent child. Benefits under this status can’t go to a spouse without children or to a worker’s surviving parents.

Here’s an example: Levan hasn’t been a model breadwinner. But lately, the single father has started to hunker down, taking a job as a desk clerk in a resort hotel and bringing in steady money for the first time in his life. When he dies in a hang-gliding accident at age 33, Levan has built up seven work credits over the last two years. That wouldn’t normally be enough to gain a survivor’s benefit. But under Levan’s “currently insured status” with the SSA, his young son qualifies for a survivor’s benefit. Given his limited earnings history, however, the benefit is modest.