Marital status and taxes

[Snnipe_70E]

@Anny_Middon

I have no idea what’s needed by Social Security to prove you’re married; I never bothered to even formally change my name with them when I got married a bazillion years ago, but they quickly changed over all my records to my married name.

However, it may be important when you or your husband nears retirement age to let them know. One claiming strategy currently available to married people is for one to claim at retirement age and the other to take the spousal benefit when eligible. (Sorry for the inexact age references here, but I’m uncertain how old you need to be to claim spousal.) Taking spousal benefits does not affect your own benefits, which will continue to grow as if you were taking no benefits. Then, when you hit full retirement age or age 70 (your choice, natch), you switch to your own benefit. You’d have to run the numbers, but this often results in higher lifetime benefits than simply taking your own benefit at retirement age. I decided to take my benefits at age 62; if my husband decides to take his at 70 (possible), he’ll claim spousal on mine when he turns 66 – his benefit at age 70 won’t change by nature of taking spousal, and we’ll have that extra income for those 4 years.

They might be phasing this strategy out, and of course they may change it by the time you retire. But I urge everyone who is nearing retirement age to make an appointment at your local SSA office to discuss claiming options. SS is nowhere near as straightforward as I long thought it must be, and you might as well get every dollar you’re entitled to.

Having said that, I visited my local SSA office last October, and they changed the rules effective January 1, so one of the strategies I discussed with them was no longer available.

I know this doesn’t apply to you, Roderick, but it may to others: Many don’t know that you can claim spousal benefits based on a prior marriage. IIRC you have to have been married at least 10 years and not have remarried, but if you meet the age requirements you can get the benefit and your former spouse doesn’t even have to know you’re getting it.

don’t want to hijack but with both spouses making near the same this tactic does not work. When I was 68 my wife retired at 63+. She cold draw her early SS or try and collect 1/2 my age 66 benefit adjusted to her age. But if her benefit was more that 1/2 my adjusted benefit she could only collect her benefit.

[Eva_Luna]

I don’t think the IRS routinely cerifies marriages of people who file as married. Someone I know recently revealed that although she had a courthouse wedding ceremony, she never bothered (and we’re 15 years after the fact now) to register the marriage with the government, which means that legally speaking she is not married. And yet she has been filing as married all this time.

I can’t fathom why she wouldn’t have bothered to register the marriage - she was already at the damn courthouse, and all she would have had to do is walk down the hall and drop it off. Not my life, though. I just hope nothing ever happens to her or her husband (or their kids) that makes that little piece of paper important.

[Voyager]

@Hari_Seldon

When I got my SS number, I just walked into an office and asked for it. Filled out some form, no proof of age, of citizenship, or anything else. I walked out with a card. Simpler times.

What do you mean walk in? 45 years ago when I was in college we came up with a plan to get our hall lounge into MIT. I got it a social security number and card (just found it) but we never went any further. So yeah, not too hard back then.

[doreen]

@Eva_Luna

I don’t think the IRS routinely cerifies marriages of people who file as married. Someone I know recently revealed that although she had a courthouse wedding ceremony, she never bothered (and we’re 15 years after the fact now) to register the marriage with the government, which means that legally speaking she is not married. And yet she has been filing as married all this time.

I can’t fathom why she wouldn’t have bothered to register the marriage - she was already at the damn courthouse, and all she would have had to do is walk down the hall and drop it off. Not my life, though. I just hope nothing ever happens to her or her husband (or their kids) that makes that little piece of paper important.

Are you (or she) sure she needed to even drop off the paper down the hall? I got married in a church and it wasn’t my responsibility to get anything back to the Marriage License Bureau- that was the officiant’s responsibility. And it would have been the officiant’s responsibility even if we had gotten married at the clerk’s office. Did your friend get married in Chicago? Just for the heck of it ( and to see if my city is different from everywhere else, as it so often is) , I looked it up and found out that currently in Cook County

1. the officiant is responsible for completing and returning the bottom of the license and
2. Marriage certificates are not automatically sent to the couple- they must be requested. Is it possible that your friend didn’t know she needed to request a certificate and is assuming the marriage isn’t registered because she didn’t get one?
   The IRS doesn’t routinely check marital status- although they may if you get audited.

[Eva_Luna]

@doreen

Are you (or she) sure she needed to even drop off the paper down the hall? I got married in a church and it wasn’t my responsibility to get anything back to the Marriage License Bureau- that was the officiant’s responsibility. And it would have been the officiant’s responsibility even if we had gotten married at the clerk’s office. Did your friend get married in Chicago? Just for the heck of it ( and to see if my city is different from everywhere else, as it so often is) , I looked it up and found out that currently in Cook County

1. the officiant is responsible for completing and returning the bottom of the license and
2. Marriage certificates are not automatically sent to the couple- they must be requested. Is it possible that your friend didn’t know she needed to request a certificate and is assuming the marriage isn’t registered because she didn’t get one?

I’m not exactly sure where in IL she got married, but most likely Cook County. She is a co-worker and we need to request marriage certificates for people for work purposes all the time, so she knows how it works. And she told me that she still had the original marriage license at home, but wasn’t worried about it because she could just go have it registered whenever she felt like it.

(I got married in Lake County, and my sister-in-law, who was from out of state, officiated. She gave us the marriage certificate so we could deal with the registration ourselves. I had the certificate back in the mail less than a week later.)