Qualifying for Social Security generally requires you to work for a whole bunch of years and pay taxes on your income. And if you hold down a job most of your life and pay taxes accordingly, there's a very strong chance you'll be eligible for benefits once your career comes to an end.
But qualifying for Social Security can be tough for people who take very long career breaks or mostly don't work at all. And it's easy to see how you might get to your 60s without having enough work credits to be eligible for benefits.
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Let's say you had children at a pretty young age and stayed out of the workforce to care for them. It may be that by the time they moved out and you were ready to start working, an elderly parent of yours fell ill and needed you as a caregiver.
The good news is that there's a way to collect Social Security even if you don't qualify yourself. The program pays spousal benefits to the current and former spouses of eligible recipients. This means that if you're at least 62 years old and have a spouse who's just signed up for benefits, you can claim Social Security, too.
But it's important to understand how Social Security spousal benefits work. And there's one key rule you need to take care not to botch.
A key filing strategy is off the table
Social Security rewards some beneficiaries who delay their claims past full retirement age, which is the age you can collect your benefits without a reduction. Full retirement age is 67 for any person born in 1960 or later.
If you're claiming Social Security on your own earnings record and delay your claim past full retirement age, your benefits will increase 8% for each year you do so, up until your 70th birthday. And while you're allowed to file for Social Security beyond age 70, there's no financial incentive to do so.
But the delayed retirement credits that are available to Social Security recipients taking benefits on their own earnings records are not available to people claiming spousal benefits. So if you're filing for spousal benefits, there's no sense in delaying that claim beyond full retirement age -- just as there's no sense in waiting beyond age 70 to claiming on your own record.
Your Social Security spousal benefits max out at 50% of your spouse's monthly payments at the spouse's full retirement age. If your spouse is eligible for $2,500 a month in Social Security at full retirement age and you claim spousal benefits at full retirement age, you should get $1,250 a month.
But $1,250 is the maximum amount you can get out of Social Security unless your spouse passes away. In that case, you'd be entitled to survivor benefits, which equal 100% of your spouse's benefit.
At that point, you'd be bumped up to $2,500. Until then, there's nothing you can do to increase your spousal benefit.
That said, you can reduce your spousal benefit by claiming it before reaching full retirement age. You can sign up as early as 62 if you need or want the money sooner. But then you'd be looking at less than $1,250 in our example.
Make sure you know the rules
Social Security is a complex program. And what makes it even trickier is that some of the strategies that apply to benefits claimed on your own record don't apply to spousal benefits.
So if you're in line for spousal benefits, know the rules. If you delay your spousal benefit claim past full retirement age, all you'll end up doing is forcing yourself to wait longer for that money than you need to. And that's a mistake you don't want to make.
