Hi Larry,
My baby’s father is American. He is very sick, cancer an unfortunately the prognosis is very bad. While we are processing that. He wants to get married to pass his social security check on to my and our son.
I want you to know if ;
- that is possible?
- if it has an effect on my income here in Belgium
-will it increase my taxes?
- can the American state claim my child? My son is Belgian now and he’s under my custody.
- how much will I receive and how much will it cost?Kind regards
Rania
Hi Rania,
My expertise is limited to U.S. Social Security benefits, so I'm only able to answer a few of your questions. You would not need to be married to your son's father in order for your son to potentially qualify for Social Security benefits, but his father would either need to be deceased or drawing his Social Security in order for your son to qualify for child benefits.
If you do get married, however, then you may also qualify for Social Security benefits if your son is under age 16 or disabled, and provided that he's living with you. Again though, you could only be eligible if your husband is drawing his Social Security benefits or if he's deceased. You could potentially qualify for widow's benefits even if you don't have an eligible child in your care, but you'd then need to be at least age 60 or age 50 if you're disabled. And, in order to qualify for widow's benefits your marriage would likely need to have lasted for at least 9 months and end in your husband's death.
If your son's father is drawing U.S. Social Security benefits then you may want to apply for benefits on your son's behalf as soon as possible. U.S. Social Security benefits can be paid to Belgian citizens living in Belgium because the U.S. has a totalization agreement with Belgium. I can't tell you how much, if any, your son's benefit might be because that would depend on his father's earnings history. There is no charge for filing an application for U.S. Social Security benefits. For information on how to go about applying for benefits outside of the U.S., refer to the following Social Security website: https://www.ssa.gov/foreign/index.html.
Best, Jerry
