SS for a widow

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He collected SS. She had a teaching pension and a very small SS payment (did not even cover Medicare). He died. She received a series of very confusing letters from SS. She took them to a local SS office. They told her she should expect to get two checks every month to collect off both accounts.

This is not our understanding of how SS works. Shouldn't she only collect the higher of the two (adjusting for her pension)?

That is my understanding as well... and there's no adjusting for the pension. Pension has nothing to do with Social Security.

However, while her husband was alive, she should have qualified for a SS amount that was 1/2 of his amount. You say her SS payment was very small? She should have applied for half of his...

Unless there's some kind of teacher related deal- I know in some states, teachers do not pay into social security, and that may affect whether they can claim their husband's SS? I don't know about that.

+1 Even within a state (Georgia, for example), some school systems may not pay into Social Security.

how does this work? the teachers are treated as contractors?

No. They work for schools in states that decided not to have teachers pay into social security. They pay into their own state version, I guess.

The difficulty comes when they retire if they also worked in jobs where they DID pay into social security. Or if their spouses worked in SS jobs. They basically end up getting screwed over imo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. I don't understand the Medicare implication. Was she using her SS to pay for Medicare? If she was old enough to draw SS, wouldn't she also be receiving MC benefits rather than still paying into the system?

It's only Part A of Medicare (hospital insurance) that's free to the recipient. Part B (medical insurance) and Part D (prescription drug insurance) people pay for, often by deduction from their Social Security benefit.