My wife has a French Gov't pension (SS?) from her teaching career, most of which was in the US. Some payment was also in USD and she has credits for SS in her own right. I have applied for SS benefits at age 69, and am interested if she is eligible for the full spousal benefit on top of her French benefit. She is 66 now.

Hi,

Yes, at least potentially. If the only other pension that your wife receives is a pension from a foreign government, that wouldn't have any adverse effect on her Social Security spousal benefits.

Depending on how many U.S. Social Security work credits your wife has earned, she may qualify for her own Social Security retirement benefits or a totalization benefit. Totalization benefits are a special type of benefit based on a combination of U.S. work credits and work credits from other countries who have a totalization agreement with the U.S. The U.S. has a totalization agreement with France, so if your wife has at least 6 U.S. Social Security quarters of coverage (QC) but fewer than 40 QCs then she may qualify for a totalization benefit.

If your wife was born after January 1 1954, she couldn't file for spousal benefits without also filing for her own benefits at the same time. In that case she could only be paid the higher of her own rate or her spousal rate. However, if your wife was born prior to January 2 1954, she could potentially file just for spousal benefits without also filing for her own benefits.

I don't have enough information about your and your wife's benefit rates to be able to give you any advice about your filing options. You and your wife may want to strongly consider using our software (https://maximizemysocialsecurity.com/purchase) to fully analyze the options available to you in order to determine your best strategy for maximizing benefits. The software does not calculate totalization benefits, however.

Best, Jerry