I am a retired Federal worker with a pension. My spouse died at 69 years and was drawing social security 1800 monthly. I was denied spousal benefits based on my pension. Additionally, I was denied social security based on my own record. They said I couldn’t double dip. How is this legal?

Hi. I'm sorry for your loss. Back in the 1980s, Congress added the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) provision into the Social Security law. It's legal because Congress has the authority to amend the Social Security law.

The WEP provision only affects Social Security retirement and disability benefits payable based on a person's own Social Security covered earnings. WEP can cause a person's Social Security benefit to be lower if they receive a pension based on their earnings that were exempt from Social Security taxes, but it never reduces their benefit rate to zero (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf). Therefore, if you've been denied Social Security benefits based on your own earnings, you must have fewer than 40 quarters of Social Security covered work.

The GPO provision only affects auxiliary and survivor benefits (e.g. spousal, widow). It states that if a person receives a pension from governmental work in the U.S. based on their earnings that were exempt from Social Security taxes then their Social Security auxiliary or survivor benefit is offset by 2/3rds of the amount of their government pension (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf). Therefore, if the government pension is at least 1.5 times as much as their Social Security auxiliary or survivor benefit amount then their payment amount is reduced to zero.

Best, Jerry