I receive retirement benefits from the public employees system. Two years ago when my wife passed, I applied for social security survivors benefits. I was told that due to the windfall criteria I could not receive any portion through her benefit. Due to mounting healthcare costs, I surely could use those funds. Is there a process to appeal? Do you know of any procedures that I can pursue? Thanks

Hi. Social Security has an appeals process, but you must normally request an appeal within 60 days of the determination you're appealing (https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/disability/appeal.html). If you applied for survivor benefits and if you were eligible for benefits if it wasn't for your public employee (PERS) pension, then your claim probably wasn't disallowed. More likely, your claim was approved but you couldn't be paid any survivor benefits because of the Government Pension Offset (GPO) provision.

GPO can cause a person's Social Security survivor or spousal benefits to be offset by 2/3rds of the amount of any pensions they receive that are based on their earnings from a governmental agency in the U.S. that didn't pay Social Security taxes on those earnings. So, assuming that you are receiving a pension that causes GPO, then the only way you could be paid survivor benefits is if your survivor benefit rate is more than 2/3rds of the gross amount of your PERS pension.

If you want to formally pursue matters further, your next step would depend mainly on the status of the claim you filed two years ago. If your claim was actually disallowed, then unless you have good cause for filing a late appeal then you would need to reapply for benefits. You would then have appeal rights on that claim if you disagree with the resulting determination. However, if your previous claim was approved but your survivor benefits were suspended due to GPO, then you would need to establish that the GPO was misapplied or miscalculated. That can be done without filing a formal appeal, but you would need to submit evidence to prove your case. You should probably read the following Social Security publication about GPO to determine if you think that it may have been incorrectly applied when you filed for benefits: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf.

Best, Jerry