Because Social Security disability (SSD) benefits are calculated using a factored equation and include work credits in the analysis of eligibility, getting married can have an impact on the amount of monthly benefits you’ll receive in the future or even whether or not you will remain eligible to receive benefits.

The biggest influence of marriage on SSD benefits comes from how it changes your life circumstances. When you were approved for SSD benefits, your life circumstances were taken into account by the Social Security Administration (SSA). This includes not only your financial status and earnings or income, but also your living situation and other factors. For this reason, marriage can change your eligibility, dependent upon how different your new life circumstances will be as opposed to those under which you initially qualified for SSD benefits.

Understanding how marriage may affect your SSD benefits requires you to understand the basics of how SSD eligibility is determined. While medical status and the presence of a clearly diagnosed and defined, severely limiting disability is necessary to qualify for SSD benefits, so are sufficient work credits.

Work credits are essentially a contribution to the Social Security fund through payroll deduction. For this reason, anyone who qualifies for SSD benefits must qualify under work credits as either:

• a disabled worker who previously contributed to the Social Security fund, or
• as a dependent of a worker who has over the course of their employment history contributed to that fund.

In other words, when you initially qualified for SSD benefits, you did so because either you, your spouse at the time, or your parent met the work credit requirements for you to receive disability benefits. The manner in which marriage may affect your SSD benefits is dependent upon how you qualified for work credits with your initial SSD application.

Here’s how marriage may affect your benefits dependent upon how your life circumstances will change:

You Qualified Under Your Own Work Credits

If you are a disabled worker who paid into the SSD fund through payroll deductions prior to becoming disabled, then your marriage will not affect your eligibility for benefit payments or the amount of benefits you receive on a monthly basis. This is true regardless of your future spouse’s employment status or earnings.

You Qualified with Work Credits as a Dependent

There are instances in which dependents (widows/widowers, adult children, spouses and even ex-spouses) of disabled workers qualify to receive benefit payments through the SSD system. If you are the beneficiary of a disabled worker’s SSD, then you may lose your own benefits after getting married.

Whether or not you remain eligible for benefits depends on how you’re related to the individual under whose work credits you initially qualified for benefits. Following you will find additional details explaining how marriage will affect your continued eligibility for benefits based on your relationship with the worker.

• Disabled Adult Child
  

  If you are a disabled adult child of a worker (whether disabled or currently working), then you may receive disability benefits under their work credits with the SSD system. If you get married, you will no longer qualify for benefits. There is one potential exception to this rule. Under some circumstances, two disabled adult children who currently receive SSD benefits under their parents’ work credits can sometimes continue to both receive benefits even after getting married.

• Ex-Spouse of a Living or Deceased Worker
  

  If you are currently receiving SSD benefits under your ex-wife or husband’s work credits, then getting remarried will end your eligibility for benefits. The same is true if you initially qualified under the work credits of an ex-spouse who is deceased.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) periodically reviews the eligibility status of anyone receiving Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits. During a continuing disability review (CDR), the SSA looks at two things in order to determine if you are still eligible for SSD benefits: work activity and improvement in the condition that qualified you for SSD in the first place.

The first thing to realize with Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits and retirement is that “full retirement age” is not always 65. In fact, 65 is only considered the age of retirement for those born in 1937 or earlier, so chances are that you will be among those who hit full retirement age at a later date. In any event, you will still want to know how your SSD benefits will be affected by hitting what is considered retirement age by the Social Security Administration (SSA) for someone in your age demographic.

When is Full Retirement Age for Me?

Over the years, the SSA has periodically adjusted the age of full retirement. There are several designations of full retirement age according to the SSA and each is defined by your date of birth. The breakdown is as follows:

For the majority of current SSD beneficiaries, the age of full retirement is 67, which means you may have at least a couple more years before you need to be concerned with how hitting retirement age will affect your benefits; however, it’s good to understand the process in advance so there are no surprises when you do reach 67.

What Happens with My SSD When I Hit Full Retirement Age?

There are two major changes that take affect when you reach full retirement age. The first is that your benefits will no longer be paid through SSD. Instead, you will transition to the SSA’s “Old Age” or retirement program instead. Your benefits will not be interrupted with this transition and the benefit payment will be processed as usual. It will simply come in from a different Social Security fund rather than SSD, but you won’t even notice the difference.

The second change that comes with reaching full retirement age is that your benefits are no longer subject earning limits that were in place with your SSD benefits. In other words, you can increase your earnings from a part time job or other income source without losing dollars in your monthly benefit check.

Will Full Retirement Age Change My Benefit Amount?

Standard full retirement benefits from the SSA are calculated on what a worker contributed to the Social Security system over the course of their employment. Disability benefits are as well, so the amount of your monthly benefit payment is not affected by the transition from SSD to retirement benefits.

What’s Required for Me to Make the Transition?

SSD beneficiaries don’t have to do anything when they hit the age of full retirement. The SSA automatically transitions your benefits to the retirement fund without requiring you to complete new applications or other forms.

What about SSD and Early Retirement?

The SSA does currently allow people to apply for and begin receiving early retirement benefits at the age of 62; however, if you are disabled and have been receiving SSD benefits, then hitting early retirement age is not applicable for you. Instead, you would simply continue to receive SSD benefits until you reach the age of full retirement, at which time you would be transitioned from SSD to retirement benefits automatically by the SSA.

The loss of a family member is never an easy thing to go through. While we must tend to our emotional affairs there are also legal affairs that must be looked after as well. There is quite a bit of red tape to go through when a person passes away. If certain steps aren’t taken and certain parties aren’t notified of the family member’s passing, you may find yourself in trouble in the midst of your grief.

When an individual applies for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA), the SSA will normally look at that person’s work history to determine which type of disability benefit the applicant is entitled to. For Social Security Disability benefits, also known as SSDI, a person must have earned a certain number of work credits in order to qualify for benefits. These work credits are earned each quarter an individual works and pays taxes into the Social Security system.