Social Security strategy for dying brother and his surviving wife

[Mark@K-Town]

I would appreciate some advice from members of this forum regarding the best approach to claim Social Security retirement benefits for my younger brother and his wife.

I have summarized their situation below and posted 4 questions after this summary.

My brother has been fighting cancer since 2019. He will be 67 later this year. In the last month he had a number of relatively minor strokes. Last week he had a serious stroke that, among other things, has left him unable to eat or drink anything. He has decided to refuse any further life prolonging medical treatments. There will be a meeting at the hospital today to discuss hospice options for him. Given this, his family and I believe that his life expectancy is probably a matter of days.

Up to this point, my brother has been working as the CEO of a very small company. This week his company is placing him on medical disability leave. I believe that the HR director and board are talking steps to preserve his employer-provided healthcare insurance (I don’t know the details).

My brother’s wife is 63 years old and also currently employed.

They each have qualified for Social Security retirement benefits and had been planning to start taking these at age 70, respectively. My brother’s monthly retirement benefit is higher than his wife’s benefit (I don’t know the actual dollar amounts).

Questions:

1. Should my brother immediately initiate his monthly benefit?
2. Does my sister-in-law (SIL) receive my brother’s (higher) monthly benefit after his death?
3. What is the best approach to maximize my SIL’s monthly benefit?
4. What other things regarding Social Security does my SIL need to consider?

Thanks for any constructive advice for my brother and his wife regarding how/when to initiate their respective Social Security benefits.

 

[sengsational]

That's sad news about your brother. Sorry to hear it. I'm not expert, but I'm pretty sure there's no door that closes on the spouse should one of the couple pass. In other words, this stuff can wait.

 

[BruinBones]

Sorry about your brother. I’m not an expert either, but in my rudimentary research for you, I also found that:

• If you are below full retirement age and still working, your survivor benefit could be affected by Social Security's earnings limit.

 

[RetiredHappy]

If I were to be in the same situation,
1) I would not start SS immediately. Every month that goes by the benefit amount goes up, which will result in higher survivor benefits. If he takes now, that amount is frozen (except for COLA) at this point. If he doesn't take now, then it will grow until the day he dies. It stops growing at age 70.
2) Yes.
3) Decide after he passes - whether to continue to work or file for survivor benefits. She will only get FULL survivor benefits at her FRA. So she may want to keep working until her FRA before filing for survivor benefits.
4) If she wants to both work and collect her SS, then she can only make up to a certain amount (you can look it up) before reducing her SS amount.

 

[pb4uski]

Sorry to hear of your DBs health troubles. Too young.

You wrote that your DSILs SS is lower than your DBs, but is it less than 50%?

Have you run their situation through opensocialsecurity.com?

I suspect it would be best for your DSIL to claim her SS now and then claim survivor benefits at her FRA.

 

[sakowitzm]

pb4uski writes: "I suspect it would be best for your DSIL to claim her SS now and then claim survivor benefits at her FRA."

I'm absolutely no expert but this sounds off to me. Once you've claimed on your own record, can you really - later - claim survivor benefits? When my wife passed I immediately claimed survivor benefit on her record and will wait until 70 to claim on my own record. Again, I have no idea if this is okay.... just sounds odd. Happy to learn I'm wrong.

 

[audreyh1]

Yes, survivor benefits are completely independent of benefits on your own record. For highest survivor benefits you want to wait until FRA, then you can claim whatever your deceased spouse was or would have been getting assuming it exceeds your own.

 

[sakowitzm]

Yes, survivor benefits are completely independent of benefits on your own record. For highest survivor benefits you want to wait until FRA, then you can claim whatever your deceased spouse was or would have been getting assuming it exceeds your own.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Dreamer]

She should really check with her social security office. It depends on a lot of different things. If she is still working and earning a good salary, she might not be eligible for any social security. Also, it depends on the amounts of their social security. His might be higher now, but hers could be higher if she takes survivor benefits first and lets her own increase with delayed retirement benefits till age 70.

I am so sorry for this happening to your family.

 

[steady saver]

I'm so sorry. You are a good brother to step in to help.