Many people in Tennessee rely on Social Security retirement payments to help them finance the later stages of life. However, if you were planning to retire with a spouse and then your marriage ended, you may wonder whether you qualify for Social Security retirement benefits on your own.
Per CNBC, you may be able to collect Social Security retirement benefits using the work record of your ex-husband or ex-wife as long as certain circumstances hold true. Whether it benefits you to do so depends on whether you, also, qualify for Social Security retirement benefits, and if you do, how much you might be able to collect in each scenario.
Determining eligibility for an ex’s Social Security
Qualifying for Social Security retirement payments requires you or your ex to reach a certain age and have generated a certain number of work credits through your time spent in a Social Security-covered position. If your ex-spouse is eligible for these benefits, you may be able to collect them using his or her earnings record, provided your marriage lasted 10 years or more.
Determining how much you might collect
If you have enough work credits to also qualify for Social Security, it makes financial sense to figure out how much you might get in your monthly benefit checks. Should you decide to collect them using your former spouse’s earnings record, rather than your own, you may only get up to 50% of how much your former partner does each month.
Whether you collect these benefits using your own earnings history or your one-time partner’s has no impact on how much your ex collects each month.
