Question about survivor benefit from an ex-pat: I don't think your software will be able to help with this one but I'm willing to try anything.
My US citizen husband and I moved to Australia on 2003 - he died in 2014 age 63. I started receiving a USA SS survivor benefit one year later in 2015 when I was 62. It is my main income. In August 2018 SS stated that there had been a miscalculation and that the benefit has dropped from approx $1400 month to $50 month because of "windfall elimination". However, I have had no "windfall" - no other pension, no income, no annuity, no work, no new husband, no anything. I have sent 4 responses including an official appeal to Baltimore with copies to the field office in the Philippines, 1 by express mail return signature receipt, but there has been no response. The Philippine office which is supposed to handle all ex-pat Social Security issues has recently cut its phone contact to 2 mornings a week and do not respond to emails. I keep a detailed log of every contact with SS. Since I no longer live in the USA I can't expect the member for Congress to be interested in expat issues. Do you have any suggestions on how I can proceed? Many thanks, in desperation, Jane PS this form wouldn't accept an overseas phone so this is my old USA one.

Hi,

First off, I'm sorry for your loss.

I'm afraid that I can't be of much help to you. What I can tell you is that the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf) does not affect Social Security survivor benefits. Therefore, your widow's rate would not have been reduced due to WEP.

If you were informed that the reduction of your benefit rate had something to do with WEP, the only thing that might make sense is if while your husband was receiving Social Security his benefits should have been reduced due to the WEP provision. That might be the case if in addition to Social Security he was also receiving another pension (or lump sum payment in lieu of a pension) based on his earnings which weren't subject to Social Security taxes. In that event, your husband may have been paid too much in Social Security benefits, and any outstanding overpayment of benefits could be recovered by withholding your widow's benefits. If that was the case, though, Social Security should have sent you a notice explaining the overpayment as well as your right to file an appeal or request a waiver of the overpayment.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough information about your case to do anything more than speculate. Regardless, though, I don't know of any way you could resolve your problem other than by contacting Social Security. The following Social Security publication lists phone numbers to call from outside of the U.S. on page 33: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf.

Best, Jerry