Please help! I was under the impression that as a divorced disabled spouse about to enter full retirement age I could get half of my ex-spouses social security and let mine grow 8% a year for the next several years. From AARP article:"There is one more exception to deemed filing for divorced spouses. Regardless of when you were born you can file a restricted application if you are entitled to Social Security disability payments." I called social security and they said this was not true. I was married for 20 years and my full social security is less than half of my ex-husbands'. Who is correct? Thank you!!!!!

Hi. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but in this case it's Social Security. If you're collecting Social Security disability (SSDI) benefits, those benefits will convert to regular Social Security retirement benefits when you reach full retirement age (FRA). At that point you could voluntarily suspend your benefits to earn delayed retirement credits (DRC), but you couldn't be paid divorced spousal benefits while your own benefits are suspended (https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/claiming.html).

Assuming that your ex-spouse is still living, unless you were born prior to January 2 1954 there is no way that you could apply for divorced spousal benefits without being deemed to be filing for your own Social Security retirement benefits at the same time. And in that event you could only be paid basically the higher of the 2 benefit rates. If you were born after January 1 1954, you can't file for divorced spousal benefits while allowing your own benefit rate to grow until age 70 unless your husband is deceased and if you haven't already started drawing either SSDI or retirement benefits based on your own work record.

I'm not familiar with the AARP article you mentioned, but a person can apply for SSDI benefits without being deemed to be filing for spousal or divorced spousal benefits regardless of when they were born. So, I assume that's what the article that you read was alluding to. However, unless you were born prior to January 2 1954 you can't file just for divorced spousal benefits on the account of a living ex-spouse without being deemed to be filing for your own retirement benefits at the same time.

Best, Jerry