Hi Larry,
Do I qualify for spousal support if my wife applies and suspends her benefits at ( 66 and 6 months )? She is 64 and I am 58 and we both want the maximum retirement benefit at age 70. We are still employed, and would like to collect some benefits until we are eligible for the max benefit at age 70. best, Clarence

Dear Clarence,

You two missed the deadline to use the file and suspend strategy because you were both too young to meet it. Your wife could collect a full divorced spousal benefit starting at 68 if you were divorced two years before she started collecting. Then at 70 she could collect her retirement benefit. You two would would, thus, have to get divorced in two years. Why 68 and not 66? Because the ex needs to be 62 or over to provide a divorced spousal benefit on his/her record.

Assuming you don't divorce, you'd need to start taking your retirement benefit at 62 to let her collect a full spousal benefit for two years while waiting till 70 to collect her retirement benefit. Then at 66 you could suspend your own benefit retirement and restart it at 70. Also, at 64 you might be eligible for an excess spousal benefit.

Whether this strategy is optimal is not at all clear compared to just having the two of you simply wait till 70 to take your retirement benefits. This is a question that our program can precisely answer in a few seconds based on all the variables, like maximum ages of life and the absolute and relative sizes of your earnings. Unfortunately, my brain is peanuts compared to our program's. So please purchase the program, which will ensure you don't mess up this critical decision.

My best, Larry