Hi,
I'm an (almost) 62 year old single woman. At 62, my reduced social security benefit will be $800 per month. I have been married twice (over 10 years each time) and both marriages have ended in divorce. Both exes have reached full retirement age but have not begun collecting Social Security benefits. Their benefits will be about the same -- $2,400 per month.
One ex has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and is in failing health with poor prognosis.
Please, give me some strategizing advice for claiming social security benefits.
Thanks!

Hi,

As long as both of your ex's are living then whenever you file for either retirement benefits on your own record or for divorced spousal benefits you'll be deemed to be filing for all of those benefits. And, you'll only receive basically the higher of those benefit rates and your rate will be reduced for age if you start drawing prior to your full retirement age (FRA).

You must be at least age 62 to be eligible for either retirement or divorced spousal benefits, although you could potentially qualify for survivor benefits as early as age 60 on the record of a deceased ex-spouse. If you start drawing retirement/divorced spousal benefits and one of your ex's dies before you reach FRA, you could opt to wait until FRA in order to receive unreduced survivor benefits on that ex-spouse's record. In the meantime you could continue to draw whatever you're entitled to on your own record and the other ex-spouse's record. Or, you could choose to go ahead and start drawing the survivor benefits prior to FRA in which case they'd be reduced for age. Again, though, you could only receive the highest benefit rate to which you're entitled, not multiple benefits.

It sounds like you have numerous possible filing options available to you, with additional variables such as your ex's illness also being involved. Furthermore, you don't mention whether or not you're working, which is another variable that could affect when you'd want to file for benefits. Suffice to say that there are way too many possibilities for me to be able to try to summarize them here. You should strongly consider using our maximization software to compare your various filing options so that you can you can make an educated decision on which strategy you think would work out best for you.

Best, Jerry