New legislation, the Surviving Widow(er) Income Fair Treatment (SWIFT) Act, would expand Social Security survivor's benefits for widows, widowers and surviving divorced spouses by updating benefit caps, legal restrictions and claiming requirements.
In particular, the bill would benefit surviving spouses who:
- Face a benefit cap because their deceased spouse claimed Social Security before full retirement age
- Become disabled before age 50 or more than seven years after their spouse's death
- Have children in their care
"The SWIFT Act allows widow(ers) and surviving divorced spouses with disabilities to receive 100% of the survivor benefits they are entitled to, regardless of their age, and empowers widow(er)s and surviving divorced spouses to increase their survivor benefits beyond current arbitrary caps," the bill's sponsor, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Tuesday in a statement.
Other sponsors are Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The bill "would offer significant additional protections to surviving widows and widowers whose Social Security benefits under current law are limited and even denied because of certain long-standing technical provisions within the Social Security Act," Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement endorsing the bill.
As Richtman explained, under current law, widows and widowers who become disabled after their spouse dies are not allowed to claim survivor’s benefits until they reach age 50. The SWIFT Act allows disabled survivors to qualify for benefits regardless of their age, and without regard to when the disability begins.
Further, the disability "must have begun, in general, no more than seven years after the spouse’s death," Richtman said. "And unlike other disabled beneficiaries, the value of their benefits is significantly reduced if claimed before the widow or widower’s full retirement age (FRA)."
The bill modifies this to say that there would be no reduction in the amount of a disabled surviving spouse’s benefit solely because it began prior to the surviving spouse’s FRA.
The Social Security Act also includes a provision known as the “widow(er)’s limit,” which "permanently reduces a widow or widower’s Social Security benefit if their deceased spouse claimed retired workers benefits before reaching his or her FRA," Richtman said.
The bill eliminates the “widow(er) limit” so that the amount of the surviving spouse’s benefit "would be unaffected by the retirement decision made by the deceased spouse," Richtman continued.
The Social Security Act also includes a rule that ends child-in-care benefits for younger surviving spouses when their youngest child reaches age 16.
"Even though the mother or father’s benefit ends at that point, the child continues to receive benefits generally until age 18, a bifurcation that has no rationale other than to reduce program costs," Richtman said.
The SWIFT Act enables "younger surviving spouses with children in their care to receive spousal benefits until the youngest child reaches age 18 (or 19 if the child is still enrolled in a primary or secondary school)," Richtman added.
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