I went to the Social Security office but did not get an answer to my question. I a 60 1/2 years old and wanted to know if I can start collecting survivor benefits and suspend when I am able to get a job. When I restart, what would my survivor benefits be, at my current rate if I start collecting or at a higher rate. I plan to wait till I am 70 to switch over to my own benefits as my benefit amounts are actually higher than my survivor benefits when I turn 62. The cash inflow from the survivor benefits would help pay bills. Thanks

Hi,

The answer is essentially yes. You couldn't actually voluntarily suspend your survivor benefits, but the Social Security earnings test may cause them to be involuntarily suspended if you return to work(https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/whileworking2.html).

If you file for reduced survivor benefits and some of them are withheld due to the earnings test, your survivor rate will be adjusted upward after you reach full retirement age (FRA). For example, say your FRA is age 66 and you file at age 60 1/2 but only end up receiving 12 months of benefits prior to FRA due to your work and earnings. After FRA, your benefit rate would then be adjusted up to the rate that you would have received if you had started drawing benefits at age 65.

If your age 70 retirement benefit rate on your own record would be higher than your unreduced survivor rate, you would likely want to claim survivor benefits as soon as possible even if you may later get a job that would result in your benefits being suspended. The reason is that you would eventually be switching to your own record, so you would want to maximize the total amount of survivor benefits payable prior to switching. And, the increased rate that you would receive by waiting to claim the survivor benefits at a later age would not be high enough to offset the amount of benefits that you would have passed up by not claiming benefits sooner.

When to file and which type of benefit to file for first is an extremely important decision, so you don't want to rely on guesswork. You should strongly consider using the maximization software available on this website in order to determine your best filing strategy.

Best, Jerry