I misunderstood the decision to deny me survivors/widow benefits. I was waiting on my funds to be deposited. After the 5th month, I called.I had received a letter stated that if I received a pension I would not receive benefits but the next line said my benefit would be $1315.70 a month. I would be getting that the 4th Wednesday monthly. I really needed these benefits. I need to appeal this decision.

Hi. Appeal requests must normally be filed within 60 days of when you're notified of Social Security's determination on your claim. If it's been longer than that you can still file an appeal, but you'll need to convince Social Security that you have good cause for late filing of the appeal.

The first step of appeal is a reconsideration, and the form to use to request reconsideration is an SSA-561 (https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-561.pdf). A misunderstanding can be considered as good cause for late filing under certain circumstances, so all I can suggest is that you submit a statement with your appeal request explaining to Social Security all of your reasons for filing late.

There isn't enough information in your question for me to be able to advise you as to whether or not you have a good basis for appealing Social Security's determination, though. If you are receiving a pension based on your work for a governmental agency where you didn't pay Social Security taxes, then any Social Security survivor benefits for which you'd otherwise qualify would almost certainly be offset by 2/3rds of the amount of your government pension (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf). And, that could cause your survivor benefits to be reduced to zero depending on the amounts involved.

Best, Jerry