Always a foe of gummint programs, I am researching the possibilities in gaming the SS System. By “gaming” I mean legally exploiting their idiotic rules in order to put some of the money they’ve stolen from me over the past decades back into my pocket.
Sure, I have access to the SS regulations on the web: http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title02/0200.htm
but they are virtually impossible to read, and for that reason I am appealing for advice, recommendations, suggestions, reports from experience from those in a position to know.
I have never married, considering it generally stupid, but would gladly do so to help some foreigner immigrate or to increase my own wealth. My girlfriend feels the same way. The INS has promulgated the idea of “sham” marriages – ones entered into for the sole purpose of gaining entry into the USSA. But, as far as I know, there is no concept of sham marriages regarding qualification of a spouse for SS benefits.
So, the big question is: what is there that would keep us each from marrying a foreigner, particularly one with minor children, so that she/he could benefit from receiving SS payments? The last time I looked, the monthly payouts to a widow(er) with a couple of minor kids max out at around $2000 per month – an income for a Brazilian, for example, that would easily put him/her in the top 1% of Brazilian wage earners, particularly if it weren’t taxed. In return, of course, the Brazilian could do shopping, cooking, cleaning, nursing and other things typically done by a person for his/her spouse. The agreement could be tacit or even spelled out in detail, nowadays, through a pre-nuptial or post-nuptial contract, which are legal in Texas, at least.
Furthermore, it appears that all of a person’s former spouses that he has divorced are also entitled to SS once they attain a certain age if they haven’t remarried, and all of your minor children, natural or adopted, and even the alien children of your all your divorced and widowed spouses, I think. And it appears that I could skip the marriage bit and merely adopt the children of one or more women, who would then start getting Supplemental Income or whatever the hell it is that put my sister, for example, through college once my dad qualified for SS income.
Somewhere in the SS regulations are rules regarding age, sex, nationality, residence, etc. of the spouse and number of years to qualify for this and that and cutoff ages and so on, ad nauseam. But my question is this: What are all the rules a person needs to consider in maximizing his wealth and comfort by gaming the SS system through intelligent marriage and/or adoption??