I have a teachers retirement pension from California. I divorced my husband after 35 years of marriage and I have never remarried. I began collecting my teachers pension in 1996 and it will continue for the rest of my life. My ex-husband who worked in the private sector his whole life recently passed away. His wages throughout his work life were subject to social security withholding and would have been defined as highly compensated. Can I now claim social security based and my ex-husbands earnings and be exempted from the windfall elimination provisions of social security. I am 79 years old and have never collected social security.

Hi,

I'm assuming that your wages as a teacher were exempt from Social Security taxes. In that case, any Social Security survivor benefits that you would normally qualify for would likely be offset by 2/3rds of the amount of your teachers pension. So, the answer to your question depends on the relative amounts of your teacher's pension and your Social Security survivor benefit rate. If your teacher's pension is at least 1 & 1/2 times as much as your ex-husband's full Social Security benefit rate, then you probably won't be able to receive any Social Security survivor benefits. But if it's less than that, then you probably could. You'll probably want to check with Social Security as soon as possible to see if you qualify.

By the way, it isn't the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) that apparently prevented you from receiving benefits on your ex-husband's record while he was living. Instead, it's the Government Pension Offset (GPO) provision that can cause an offset to divorced spousal and survivor benefits (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf).

Best, Jerry