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Can your spouse collect on your social security if she reaches retirement age before you do? No. In order for a wife to collect Social Security benefits on her husband's income several conditions have to be met:

1. The spouse applying for the spousal benefit is required to be at least age 62

2. The husband will need to be eligible for benefits, so he should also be at least age 62. What's more, the husband is required to actually sign up for Social Security retirement benefits in order for his wife to receive benefits based on his income. The husband may then choose to delay receiving benefits. This course of action is known as "file and suspend".

To provide an example, if the wife is 62 and the husband is 60, the wife can begin receiving benefits based on her own income, but she is unable to receive benefits based on her husband's income until he turns 62 and starts receiving his own benefits.

Having said that, if the wife is 66 and the husband is only 62, then the wife can start receiving based on her husband's income (remember, the husband will need to apply for benefits before his spouse will be able to collect based upon his earnings).

In the instances shown above, the wife can start receiving benefits calculated on her own income as soon as she turns age 62 (assuming she's got a minimum of forty quarters of earnings and also qualifies for benefits on her own), then change to half of her husband's benefit as soon as her husband qualifies for Social Security.

A number of areas to take into consideration before applying for benefits:

If a wife applies for her Social Security spousal benefit based on her husband's earnings when she attains full retirement age (age 66 for folks retiring now), then she'll collect 50% of her husband's primary insurance amount (PIA). On the other hand, if she applies for her spousal benefit at age 62, then her benefit will only be 35% of her husband's PIA.

It does not help the spouse to wait until after reaching full retirement age to apply for benefits, as spousal benefits will not include delayed credits. What's more, it doesn't benefit the wife if the husband waits to apply for benefits because she won't receive any increase in benefits that he gets by waiting to receive benefits.

Where a spouse gets to full retirement age and is qualified to apply for the spousal benefit or her own benefit, she may start receiving the spousal benefit now and delay taking her own benefit in order to accumulate delayed credits on her own benefit.

An individual can collect Social Security spousal benefits calculated on an ex-spouse's earnings so long as you were married for not less than ten years and you are currently unmarried. In case you have more than one ex-spouse which you meet the requirements pertaining to spousal benefits, you will get the largest benefit you are entitled to. One advantage that divorced spouses have over married spouses is that a divorced spouse doesn't need to wait around for a former husband to start receiving benefits as long as the pair has been divorced for a minimum of 2 yrs when she applies.

As a final point, the Social Security retirement system is gender neutral, so although this article has assumed that the wife is generally the one applying for spousal benefits, if the wife makes more money than her husband, the husband can sign up for Social Security benefits based on his wife's earnings.

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