My mom worked for a while before marrying my dad and deciding to stay home to raise children. Then, after they were divorced, she went back to work for the federal government. She has been told that she cannot collect social security based on her pre-marriage work/contributions. She also has been told that she cannot collect spousal benefits, due to her post-divorce employment by the federal government -- they say she's stuck with her federal pension, which is small, since she started work for the federal government so late in life. I can't understand why she should be blocked from claiming spousal benefits based on federal government work that did not commence until after her divorce! Can this be correct?!

Hi. It's possible, but if your mother has at least 40 quarters (QC) of Social Security of Social Security credits then she can collect Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62 even if she's also receiving a federal pension. If your mother does have enough QCs to qualify for Social Security retirement benefits, though, her benefit rate could be reduced if she receives a pension based on her non-Social Security covered earnings. That's because of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP)(https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf). However, even if WEP reduces a person's Social Security retirement benefit rate, it never reduces the benefit amount to zero.

With regard to divorced spousal or survivor benefits, if your mother is collecting a government pension that's based on her own non-Social Security covered earnings, then any Social Security divorced spousal or survivor benefits for which she'd otherwise qualify would likely be offset by 2/3rds of the amount of her government pension due to the Government Pension Offset (GPO) provision (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf). That could reduce her divorced spousal or survivor rate to zero depending on the amounts of her government pension and her divorced spousal or survivor benefit.

Our software (https://maximizemysocialsecurity.com/purchase) is fully programmed to handle computations involving both the WEP and GPO provisions, so your mother should strongly consider using our software to analyze her Social Security options.

Best, Jerry