Social Security on an ex-spouse's record

Who qualifies

You can be paid on your former spouse's work record, Social Security says, when all of these are true:

• The marriage lasted 10 years or longer.
• You are not married now.
• You are 62 or older.
• Your former spouse is entitled to Social Security retirement or disability benefits.
• The benefit you would get on your own record is less than the one on theirs.

Their remarriage does not matter. Yours does: if you have remarried, you cannot collect on the former spouse’s record unless that later marriage ended.

How much

The most it pays is half of your former spouse’s full retirement age benefit. You get the full half only if you start at your own full retirement age. Start earlier and it is permanently smaller: with a full retirement age of 67, starting at 62 pays 32.5% of their benefit instead of 50%.

Waiting past full retirement age does not raise it. The spouse’s benefit stops growing at 50%, and credits your former spouse earns by delaying are not added to it.

If your former spouse has not claimed yet

You do not have to wait for them. If you have been divorced for at least two continuous years and you are both at least 62, you can claim on their record even though they have not started their own benefits.

It takes nothing from them

What you receive does not reduce what your former spouse gets, and does not reduce what their current spouse gets.

If your former spouse dies

A surviving divorced spouse can be paid from age 60, or from 50 with a disability, if the marriage lasted at least 10 years. Remarrying before 60 usually rules this out; remarrying after 60 does not. As with the spouse's benefit, what you are paid does not reduce anyone else's.

Run your own figure

The divorced spouse estimator takes your birth year, your own and your former spouse's full retirement age benefits, the length of the marriage and the age you plan to claim, and models what you would be paid on each record. The figure is an estimate; Social Security sets the real one, and your my Social Security account shows your own record.