Hi Larry: My mother in-law who is now in her early 80’s has never collected social security. My father in-law does collect his, I’m wondering why she didn’t get a spousal benefit or up to 1/2 of my father-in-law portion. She does get a small pension working as a school librarian, Andy she didn’t pay social security. Regards

Hi,

A possible reason that your mother-in-law isn't getting benefits is because of the Government Pension Offset (GPO) provision. If a person files for spousal benefits and they're receiving a pension based on their own earnings from a governmental agency (e.g. federal, state, local) that wasn't required to pay Social Security taxes, then 2/3rds of the gross amount of their government pension is offset against their Social Security spousal rate. And, depending on the amounts involved, that could reduce the spousal rate to zero.

I don't have enough details to know whether or not your mother-in-law would be eligible for any spousal benefits from Social Security, but she could apply for spousal benefits in order to find out. The worst that could happen is that she'll be told that her spousal benefits would be fully offset to zero due to GPO.

Best, Jerry