Social Security may be your largest or one of your largest assets. How you manage it, by deciding which benefits to collect and when, can make an absolutely huge difference to your lifetime benefits. And those with the highest past covered earnings have the most to gain from maximizing their Social Security.
I've been answering questions and writing columns about Social Security each week for the past two years on PBS NEWSHOUR's website. The editors at Forbes asked me to post a Q&A each day from those columns. To see all my columns, please go to my software company's site, www.maximizemysocialsecurity.com, and click More Press below the WSJ quote.
Today’s question asks how the requirement that couples be married at least ten years to allow eligibility for divorced spouses benefits is applied. The answer reviews the determination of eligibility, discusses how this can be unfair, and notes how it's possible in some cases to remarry in order to get past the then-year threshold.
Question: I was married in 1994 and divorced in 2004. Does this make me married for 10 years, or does it have to actually be Jan. 1, 1994 to Jan. 1, 2004 to qualify as 10 years of marriage in order for me to be eligible for my ex-spouse’s higher benefits?
Answer: Unfortunately, you need to last it out a full 10 years before becoming divorced to be eligible to collect spousal or survivor benefits. If you are even one day short of the 10 year threshold (say you get divorced the day before your 10th anniversary), you get nothing. This is a very nasty Social Security gotcha. I’m not sure when this provision was put in place (perhaps the Stone Age), but it is something this Congress should change. (It used to be worse. Before 1979, you had to be married for 20 years to collect divorcée benefits.)
Plenty of spouses stay home to rear their children, which is as important a job as there is, and then get divorced before the 10 years is up. Now it’s true that their alimony decree might involve a payment from the working parent to the stay-at-home parent that takes into account that the former will collect Social Security benefits based on his or her labor earnings, whereas the child-rearing parent will not. But I doubt the alimony settlements are taking this into account.
If you were within one year of having divorced your ex, you could remarry him for the extra months needed to reach the 10-year threshold. But if you remarry him now, the clock starts from scratch. The marriage would be treated as if you are marrying a different person when it comes to determining your divorcée benefits. In other words, you’d need to be married to him for another full 10 years before calling it quits again.
