How Is The Survivors Benefit Calculated If My Spouse Dies Before Claiming?

If your spouse had not yet reached full retirement age, Social Security bases the survivor benefit on the deceased’s primary insurance amount — 100 percent of the benefit they would have been entitled to, based on their lifetime earnings.

If the late worker had passed full retirement age — 66 and 8 months for someone born in 1958, 66 and 10 months for people born in 1959 and 67 for those born in 1960 or later — the survivor benefit is based on what the deceased would have collected had they claimed benefits in the month of death. That means any delayed retirement credits the late spouse would have earned will count for survivor. These credits boost benefits by two-thirds of 1 percent for each month the deceased was past full retirement age.

Say a wage earner born in 1957 dies in 2025, just after turning 68, without having claimed Social Security. Their full retirement age was 66 and 6 months, so their surviving spouse’s benefit calculation would include 18 months of delayed retirement credits. This would increase the survivor benefit by 12 percent.

Keep in mind

A surviving spouse needs to be at full retirement age to get 100 percent of whatever the late spouse was entitled to. If you claim survivor benefits before your full retirement age, the monthly payment will be between 71.5 percent and 99 percent of the deceased’s benefit.
Full retirement age differs for survivor benefits. It’s 66 and 4 months for survivors born in 1958, 66 and 6 months for those born in 1959 and will increase incrementally to 67 for people born in 1962 and later.

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Andy Markowitz is a writer and editor for AARP, covering Social Security and fraud. He is a former editor of The Prague Post and Baltimore City Paper.

Tracy Thompson is a journalist and editor who has worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Washington Post. She is the author of three books and lives with her family in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.