So my mom finally had her phone interview on her application for surviving divorced spouse Social Security benefits. I have no idea how long it will take SSA to process her application, and there’s no question that she qualifies - this is a rant for another day, but she previously received Railroad Retirement benefits based on my dad’s earnings record before switching to her own SS benefit at age 70. That benefit has essentially the same criteria - must have been married to the earner for 10+ years and not have been remarried before age 60, I think? Anyway, she qualifies. SSA already has in its possession all the information they need to process her application, and did the moment Dad died, so honestly if I were Queen of America, she would have gotten benefits automatically the minute he died instead of having to wait months for an appointment and probably more months for her application to be processed.
She said the interview was much more detailed than her previous one for Railroad Retirement benefits, though, and one question that came up was her prior work teaching in public schools. (It wasn’t a significant part of her career; a couple of years in the 1960s before I was born, plus some sporadic substitute teaching over the past decade.) She does receive a small amount of money every month based on that; only a couple hundred dollars.
I know there are Social Security offsets for government pensions, but the overwhelming majority of Mom’s work history earned her Social Security credits, and none of Dad’s work history was in government. If she gets Dad’s entire SS retirement benefit, it’s totally going to be life-changing for her; Dad earned more than the max SSA contribution amount for nearly all his career, whereas Mom worked mostly in (private) nonprofits and earned much less, and is living on practically nothing now. It would really stink for her to be screwed out of nearly the maximum possible SS survivor benefits because of a couple of years of teaching.
But I have no idea how this all interacts, and would really like not to have to worry about Mom’s finances (she is 80 and is doing fine living alone for now, but that won’t be forever). Can anyone shed light on all this?.
It’s actually pretty simple. I just looked it up in my big SS book, so I don’t have an online cite for you. The magic term is “Government Pension Offset” or “GPO” if you want to do some searching.
IF
Mom worked for a local, state, or federal government agency AND
Did not pay SS taxes for that work at that time AND
Is now drawing a pension from that agency connected to that work
THEN
Whatever SS benefit she's otherwise entitled to, whether her own, her as spouse, or her as survivor, will be reduced by 66.66 cents for each dollar of such pension she receives.
So if e.g. she gets a $100/mo teacher’s pension and is eligible for her late husband’s $1000/mo SS benefit, her monthly SS benefit will be reduced by $67 from $1000 to $933 and her total take from both will be $1033 / mo.
Note that if the agency she worked for was connected to SS at the time and she did pay into SS then, then there is no offset now. I have no way to handicap which way that issue falls with the OP’s Mom.
I’m dealing with my own SS survivor’s benefits application now. The challenge they have in making it automatic is that the USA has centralized birth, death, and work records, but not centralized marriage and divorce records. So both your Mom and I need to prove we were married enough and not divorced and not remarried and … And all that takes time and records and research.
Just another way our highly fragmented 18th century governmental system provides value to its citizens. NOT!
Thank you! So it sounds like even if that teaching work reduces her SS benefit, it won’t be by much. Phew!
(P.S. I still don’t understand why the SSA doesn’t already have all the information they need to figure out her eligibility. At the time she applied for Railroad Retirement divorced spouse retirement benefits, she was already over 60, and when she switched to her own benefit, she was 70. I don’t think there’s anything she could have done since then that would have changed her eligibility for surviving divorced spouse SS benefits, even if she had remarried since then, which she didn’t.)
I suggest you’re right that there’s no reason they don’t have the necessary records in her particular case. Sounds like that particular scenario is rare enough they didn’t bother to automate a solution for it. Yet.
I don’t think there actually are centralized birth or death records . Social Security has a lot of people’s birth and death records but that’s only because they require proof of birth to open an account and issue your first card and they are notified of someone’s death when someone else wants to claim some sort of benefit on their account or when someone receiving benefits dies. If I have no survivors to claim any death benefit, (not even the burial money) I’m not at all sure SS would be notified of my death. Sure , the filing of the death certificate will notify SS if it contains my SS number , but if I leave no survivors , it might not.
SS definitely gets a copy of all DCs. For a truly unidentified / unidentifiable body the DC will necessarily lack an SSN. But for somebody identifiable, there are often enough records and witnesses out there to tie a body to an SSN with enough reliability for the coroner or equivalent to put it on the DC.
If you (any you) drop dead at home with no kin you probably leave a pretty wide paper trail. There’s a driver’s license or state ID. There’s a lease or property ownership records associated with the residence. There are income tax returns associated with that address. There are bank or credit accounts. There are friends who can say “Yes, that was Mary Doe who once told me she was born in Massachusetts.” etc.
Yes, some folks are so off-grid, so socially isolated, or have such chaotic lives that the trail can’t be found or untangled. But those folks are a small minority. What I don’t know as a factual matter is how hard the authorities in any given jurisdiction are obligated or motivated to solve the mystery if the SSN isn’t immediately obvious.
That’s really the question, how hard they must look to solve the mystery of the unknown SS number. Someone I know died during covid ( and we assumed that was the cause) The landlord called the emergency contact , which was supposed to be his brother, but the person who answered denied knowing my acquaintance. The landlord wouldn’t have had his SS number nor would the acquaintances who identified him at the MEs office and raised money for and arranged his funeral. Those acquaintances did not know exactly where he worked - they surely didn’t know his bank info. I don’t think there was a requirement to hold up the death certificate until someone dug through the apartment and found a tax return or bank statement- after all, no one was applying for benefits.
I used to run a big condo building. We had SSNs on all our owners and renters because we ran criminal background and credit checks on all of them before approving their purchase or lease. I’m renting an apartment now. The leasing company certainly has my SSN for the same reason. And they have my banking information since they get paid every month. The bank in turn has my SSN because it’s required by law that they do so.
None of that would necessarily apply to somebody renting a room or half a duplex from a private individual and paying their rent in cash. But in the various landlord / tenant threads I’ve noticed here, the various small time landlord Dopers seem to be pretty conscientious about knowing their tenant. For their own protection, not for any larger governmental compliance purpose.
That’s the kind of thing that is very dependent on circumstances - I live in NYC, but not Manhattan and it is not at all uncommon for people to have lived in the same apartment for years. This particular guy lived in the apartment he grew up in , which was rent-controlled. Which means there was no written lease and no one asked for a kid’s SS back in 1960 something. If he paid his rent by cash or Venmo or Zelle the landlord wouldn’t have his bank info - and if he paid by check I suppose the landlord might retain the bank info after depositing the check but I can’t see why. And even if someone has the bank info , I wonder if the bank will give the SS to even the medical examiner’s office directly- I’m certain they wouldn’t give it to the funeral director.
Maybe I’m naive, but if someone qualifies why wouldn’t they receive their pesion backdated, a lump sum of all the payments they missed between date of application and date of approval? It’s not the applicant’s fault the approval takes so long.
Totally off topic, but what happens if someone Inherits title?
I think they do - at least when it’s SS fault that it’s taking so long. I read someone’s post on a Facebook page recently where they were asking about which survivor benefit would their mother would be eligible for - she was married three times, widowed twice and divorced once. And the person wanted to know how people proved marriages/divorces that happened in the 60s/70s , since she seemed to believe that not only did her mother not keep the documents but that it was unrealistic to expect people to have them . If it takes months for that application to be approved because it takes months to get the documents , I expect that any retro payment will only go back to the date all documentation was submitted.