Social security for non-working spouse is HALF as much as "worker"?
June 24, 2020 10:03 AM Subscribe
So I just found out that as an ex-wife who was a stay at home Mom during our marriage, now that I am old enough to get Social Security, I will get half as much as my ex-spouse.
I mean I know I can't change the policy of the SSA, but can someone please explain to me the policy reasons behind giving one partner half the amount of the other. When married, we agreed that we wanted someone home to be with kids, and one to be out earning the money for the entire family.
What possible basis would there be later for the government to decide that the ex (who willingly gave up a lot of earning opportunities, and has less money now) should now only get half as much as the earner?
Sincere question. I can't find any explanation online of why this would be the case.
What possible basis would there be later for the government to decide that the ex (who willingly gave up a lot of earning opportunities, and has less money now) should now only get half as much as the earner?
Sincere question. I can't find any explanation online of why this would be the case.
Sorry, that was glib - my suspicion is that this is because other Social Security payouts are based on what someone actually paid into social security over the course of their career. Since a stay-at-home parent did not pay into Social Security with a salary, they had to devise an alternate system - and so they based it on a portion of the spouse's salary. Why "half" was the portion they decided on is likely tied to the assumption that the couple have stayed married, and thus "Half" of the spouse's payout would be a bonus.
I agree that this is frustrating, and I still maintain that "systemic patriarchy" is part of the reasoning, but I also grant that this is based on opinion.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:10 AM on June 24, 2020 [26 favorites]
I agree that this is frustrating, and I still maintain that "systemic patriarchy" is part of the reasoning, but I also grant that this is based on opinion.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:10 AM on June 24, 2020 [26 favorites]
The insurance amount is calculated (according to this page at SSA) on average wages in the years prior to receiving benefits.
Why only half? I suspect the answer is "half is better than nothing and we ought to give something".
posted by jquinby at 10:12 AM on June 24, 2020 [6 favorites]
Why only half? I suspect the answer is "half is better than nothing and we ought to give something".
posted by jquinby at 10:12 AM on June 24, 2020 [6 favorites]
Just to clarify for anyone who is not familiar with this rule: If you have been married for at least ten years and then get divorced, you are entitled to an amount equal to half the amount to which your former spouse is entitled. In other words, the former spouse is not harmed by the disbursement to you; they get the same amount they'd be entitled to even if they were never married.
My opinion: Social Security is a pay in, pay out system, unlike, for instance, Medicaid, which is an insurance system. In Medicaid you get help regardless of what you've paid in; in Social Security, your draw is tied to your contributions. The government could just as well have told former spouses to fuck right off because they haven't paid in, but of course there is a societal value to having spouses stay home, and a societal value to having people not be forced to eat cat food in their dotage. Ummm, but not TOO much value, right?? I view the one-half amount as analogous to the Missouri Compromise. The amount would be 100% if we viewed stay-at-home spouses (i.e., women, almost always) as fully human and decisions made during marriage as chargeable to both spouses.
posted by HotToddy at 10:18 AM on June 24, 2020 [9 favorites]
My opinion: Social Security is a pay in, pay out system, unlike, for instance, Medicaid, which is an insurance system. In Medicaid you get help regardless of what you've paid in; in Social Security, your draw is tied to your contributions. The government could just as well have told former spouses to fuck right off because they haven't paid in, but of course there is a societal value to having spouses stay home, and a societal value to having people not be forced to eat cat food in their dotage. Ummm, but not TOO much value, right?? I view the one-half amount as analogous to the Missouri Compromise. The amount would be 100% if we viewed stay-at-home spouses (i.e., women, almost always) as fully human and decisions made during marriage as chargeable to both spouses.
posted by HotToddy at 10:18 AM on June 24, 2020 [9 favorites]
When you are employed, you pay part of your wages into Social Security.
When you claim Social Security, the amount you get is heavily influenced by the amount you contributed during your career.
You were not employed for the majority of your career. Therefore, you did not contribute to Social Security for the majority of your career. Therefore, what you get is lower.
You may be eligible for additional funds based on your ex-spouses income if you meet certain criteria.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 10:22 AM on June 24, 2020 [7 favorites]
When you claim Social Security, the amount you get is heavily influenced by the amount you contributed during your career.
You were not employed for the majority of your career. Therefore, you did not contribute to Social Security for the majority of your career. Therefore, what you get is lower.
You may be eligible for additional funds based on your ex-spouses income if you meet certain criteria.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 10:22 AM on June 24, 2020 [7 favorites]
P.S. further explanation for those unfamiliar: You don't get the one-half on top of your own draw. You have to choose which one you want.
posted by HotToddy at 10:23 AM on June 24, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by HotToddy at 10:23 AM on June 24, 2020 [5 favorites]
can someone please explain to me the policy reasons
I do not know the policy reasons. However I saw how this played out with my father and his two ex-wives one of whom was my mother. The ten-year limit is, as all these things have to be, kind of arbitrary. My dad's second wife divorced him at ten years and one month and we were always sort of curious about that. My mother was the one who stayed home with the kids (us) while he went to work. My dad's second wife retired with him when he did (he was 65, she was 45) and did not work. Both were entitled to half of his social security, meaning they got half of what he got and he got the same. I think the "fairest" distribution would have been something that gave more to the person who was the stay-at-home-with-kids wife and not the one who... wasn't.
But these lines are drawn in somewhat arbitrary places and I think the key is that if you're only married for ten years and a bit, you have the option to have a job/career (as my mother did after my parents split) and make a different choice. If you are married and stay married longer, you have more access to the combined wealth of your household if you split up. If you're married later (as my father's second wife was) you may not have lost time with your career staying home to raise a family.
I feel like the "You get half" rule is kind of to have something available to someone who may have been raising a family for ten years and is then entering the workforce late (potentially) but the presumption is always going to be that people who can work outside the home are going to. I don't think it's fair necessarily but I get the idea that those are the assumptions on which it is based.
posted by jessamyn at 10:33 AM on June 24, 2020 [3 favorites]
I do not know the policy reasons. However I saw how this played out with my father and his two ex-wives one of whom was my mother. The ten-year limit is, as all these things have to be, kind of arbitrary. My dad's second wife divorced him at ten years and one month and we were always sort of curious about that. My mother was the one who stayed home with the kids (us) while he went to work. My dad's second wife retired with him when he did (he was 65, she was 45) and did not work. Both were entitled to half of his social security, meaning they got half of what he got and he got the same. I think the "fairest" distribution would have been something that gave more to the person who was the stay-at-home-with-kids wife and not the one who... wasn't.
But these lines are drawn in somewhat arbitrary places and I think the key is that if you're only married for ten years and a bit, you have the option to have a job/career (as my mother did after my parents split) and make a different choice. If you are married and stay married longer, you have more access to the combined wealth of your household if you split up. If you're married later (as my father's second wife was) you may not have lost time with your career staying home to raise a family.
I feel like the "You get half" rule is kind of to have something available to someone who may have been raising a family for ten years and is then entering the workforce late (potentially) but the presumption is always going to be that people who can work outside the home are going to. I don't think it's fair necessarily but I get the idea that those are the assumptions on which it is based.
posted by jessamyn at 10:33 AM on June 24, 2020 [3 favorites]
If I may speculate... Could it be related to the "ex gets half" rule of divorce in general? I.e., each spouse gets half of the value of the house. The logical way to split benefits for a single-income household would be the same, each gets half. But there are cases where the divorce came before the eligibility, and so for part of the pay-in period, the earner would be entitled to 100% of the benefits. Following this logic, calculations could become pretty complicated pretty quickly, and so it seems to me like this is a theoretically-elegant way to account for the interests of both parties while also limiting the amount of processing bandwidth and disputes. Again, this is speculation.
(And more than a little patriarchy...)
posted by kevinbelt at 10:35 AM on June 24, 2020
(And more than a little patriarchy...)
posted by kevinbelt at 10:35 AM on June 24, 2020
In addition to what's already been stated, any extra payment from Social Security post-divorce acts as a perverse incentive for couples to divorce "on paper" in order to get additional payment from Social Security. As alluded to above, the Social Security Administration has to balance governmental interests in ensuring Social Security viability with societal interests in avoiding massive elderly poverty. I can see the 50% ratio. You are still getting "your half" of the Social Security payment which is the same as if you were married (where you'd each have 50% of the total 100% benefit). In your situation, the SSA is actually paying out 150% of the benefit you/your ex-spouse would get otherwise from 100% of contributions - this is not something the SSA wants to encourage (or make more generous).
Social Security has no goals for societal equity, for better or worse. It's a defined benefit pension plan, nothing more, nothing less.
posted by saeculorum at 10:37 AM on June 24, 2020 [12 favorites]
Social Security has no goals for societal equity, for better or worse. It's a defined benefit pension plan, nothing more, nothing less.
posted by saeculorum at 10:37 AM on June 24, 2020 [12 favorites]
My dad's second wife divorced him at ten years and one month.
That's kind of brilliant. I was a stay-at-home spouse for most of a seven-year marriage, and I don't get a dime for that time period - not from him because I wasn't married long enough and not from me because I didn't have a job.
posted by FencingGal at 10:38 AM on June 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
That's kind of brilliant. I was a stay-at-home spouse for most of a seven-year marriage, and I don't get a dime for that time period - not from him because I wasn't married long enough and not from me because I didn't have a job.
posted by FencingGal at 10:38 AM on June 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
The whole system treats people who can't work like human garbage, beneath contempt and every dollar you don't get is a dollar someone decided they don't want to give you to keep you alive. That's the policy and all decisions flow from that position. I'm not saying this to be snarky or make a comedic exaggeration. Ask anyone who's spent time wrestling with this system. If you didn't work then your worth as a human being is a calculated portion of your relationship with someone who did work. That's it.
posted by bleep at 10:40 AM on June 24, 2020 [14 favorites]
posted by bleep at 10:40 AM on June 24, 2020 [14 favorites]
We agree that there is value in raising children. We also agree that there is value as a child-care worker (nanny or au pair.) Because the latter two are employment situations, they "count."
If you volunteer your labor, that labor doesn't count in the economic scheme of things, as they stand now. (Hoping that will change with more Progressives in positions of power.)
posted by BostonTerrier at 10:53 AM on June 24, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you volunteer your labor, that labor doesn't count in the economic scheme of things, as they stand now. (Hoping that will change with more Progressives in positions of power.)
posted by BostonTerrier at 10:53 AM on June 24, 2020 [1 favorite]
The Wikipedia history of Social Security in the US is dry but interesting. (Divorce becomes common enough to be handled in the 1960s, looks like.)
posted by clew at 11:51 AM on June 24, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 11:51 AM on June 24, 2020 [1 favorite]
In the standard jargon, Social Security is a mix between social insurance, in which you get out what you pay in, and social assistance, where you get what you need. The structure is a politically determined balancing act.
Another way to pose the question is why does a spouse (or ex-spouse) get a benefit for no taxes paid? A two-earner middle-income couple might get the same amount of benefits as a rich one-earner family despite paying substantially higher lifetime payroll taxes.
If you have 15 minutes or so to read, check out the rather accessible Social Security: Out of Step with the Modern Family: It starts: "Since its inception in 1935, Social Security has provided both benefits to workers based on earnings and auxiliary benefits to spouses. The benefit structure reflects that era’s idealized family structure—the husband as sole earner with a dependent wife who remains at home, generally to raise children. When the earner reaches retirement age, the household receives Social Security benefits totaling the earner’s allotment plus half that amount for the spouse. If the earner dies, the surviving spouse gets the full earner’s share. Although these provisions are decades old, they generally have not been updated to take into account two-earner households."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:12 PM on June 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
Another way to pose the question is why does a spouse (or ex-spouse) get a benefit for no taxes paid? A two-earner middle-income couple might get the same amount of benefits as a rich one-earner family despite paying substantially higher lifetime payroll taxes.
If you have 15 minutes or so to read, check out the rather accessible Social Security: Out of Step with the Modern Family: It starts: "Since its inception in 1935, Social Security has provided both benefits to workers based on earnings and auxiliary benefits to spouses. The benefit structure reflects that era’s idealized family structure—the husband as sole earner with a dependent wife who remains at home, generally to raise children. When the earner reaches retirement age, the household receives Social Security benefits totaling the earner’s allotment plus half that amount for the spouse. If the earner dies, the surviving spouse gets the full earner’s share. Although these provisions are decades old, they generally have not been updated to take into account two-earner households."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:12 PM on June 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
> they generally have not been updated to take into account two-earner households
Not true. The 50% rule is a minimum, not a maximum. If the lower-earning spouse can draw benefits higher than the 50% based on his own earning record, he can take that.
posted by yclipse at 5:47 PM on June 24, 2020
Not true. The 50% rule is a minimum, not a maximum. If the lower-earning spouse can draw benefits higher than the 50% based on his own earning record, he can take that.
posted by yclipse at 5:47 PM on June 24, 2020
It isn't just Social Security. The US federal government's pension for survivors used to be the similar -- the widow or widower got 50% of their late spouse's pension, as if all household costs were suddenly cut in half. (I believe it's now 50% plus some set amount.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:31 AM on June 25, 2020
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:31 AM on June 25, 2020
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posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:06 AM on June 24, 2020 [18 favorites]