Question: I am getting married in September. I was told that I would loose my Social Security if I got married. I am 64 and my fiance is 58. When I reach 66 I will want to retire. Can I collect my own Social Security? What happens when he retires and wants to collect Social Security? Can we each collect our own Social Security without penalty?
Answer: You can collect your full retirement benefit starting at age 66, or you can collect a 32 percent inflation-adjusted larger retirement benefit starting at age 70.
You won’t lose your own Social Security retirement benefit by getting married. On the contrary, after one year of marriage, you’ll be eligible to collect a spousal benefit once your husband files for his retirement benefit. And if he dies after you’ve been married for nine months, you’ll be eligible to collect widows benefits based on his earnings record.
The Catch-22 here is that if you do try to collect spousal or widows benefits on your husband-to-be’s work record after having filed for your retirement benefit (even if you suspend it), you won’t get both benefits. Instead, you’ll get what is, roughly speaking, the larger of the two. Social Security describes this as you receiving your retirement benefit plus an excess spousal or excess widows benefit if one or both of them is positive.
So don’t worry about getting married unless you are divorced after having been married for 10 years. In that case, you’d lose your ability to receive a divorced spousal benefit based on your ex’s work record.
On the other hand, since you’d be marrying after age 60, you could still collect divorced widows benefits based on your ex’s work record. Again, Social Security looks at all the benefits to which you are eligible and gives you the largest. In other words, you can’t collect on both your ex-spouse’s and your current spouse’s work records at the same time.
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