Ask the expert: Rules on Social Security survivor benefits

I’m a widow. Must I be retired to receive my late husband’s Social Security survivor benefits?

No. You can receive a survivor benefit as early as age 60 (younger, if you’re disabled or caring for a minor child), even if you still work. But there are asterisks: That benefit is smaller if you take it before reaching your full retirement age. And, depending on your earnings, you may temporarily forfeit some benefit until you reach that age.

For Social Security purposes, the full retirement age is not the age at which you stop working. It’s the age at which you’re eligible to collect an unreduced Social Security benefit even if you still work. If you were born between 1943 and 1954, that age is 66.

If you wait until then to apply for a survivor benefit, you receive 100 percent of your late spouse’s full benefit. If you apply earlier, you get only 71.5 percent to 99 percent of that benefit, depending on your age at application. (A widow or widower caring for a child under age 16 receives 75 percent of her/his deceased spouse’s benefit, regardless of age.)

All of the above also applies to a surviving divorced spouse whose marriage lasted at least 10 years and who has not remarried.

If you’re a surviving spouse (or an eligible surviving ex-spouse), you also get an important break not available to others: You can take a reduced survivor benefit as early as age 60 and then switch to your own full benefit at full retirement age, or take your own reduced benefit at age 62 and switch to your full survivor benefit when you reach full retirement age. Non-survivors don’t get that option. If they take an early reduced benefit, they can’t later switch to a full benefit.

THE BOTTOM LINE Social Security survivor benefits have their own rules.

WEBSITES WITH MORE INFORMATION nwsdy.li/FRA and nwsdy.li/survivorbenefit