I'm receiving disability payments for myself for about 10 years or more. My husband passed away last June of 2020. He was working up until he died and was the main wage earner. They said I could only get the difference between my disability and what he would have gotten. That came to additional $10 a month. Why isn’t there more help for disabled widows and why can’t they get more?

Hi. I'm sorry for your loss. The Social Security Act that was passed into law by Congress bars people from receiving more than one full Social Security benefit at a time. So, when a person is simultaneously entitled to more than one type of benefit, they can only be paid essentially the higher of the benefit rates.

When a person is already receiving Social Security disability (SSDI) benefits and then becomes entitled to a higher disabled widow's benefit (DWB) prior to age 60, their DWB rate is calculated at 71.5% of the difference between their SSDI rate and their DWB rate. If you were over age 60 when you started receiving widow's benefits, though, then the percentage that you could be paid would be between 71.5% and 100% of the difference in your SSDI and DWB amounts. Whatever the partial DWB benefit amounts to is then paid in addition to your full SSDI benefit.

One small bit of potential good news that I can give you is that there is a provision in the Social Security law that allows eliminating the reduction applied to a person's DWB benefit when the person reaches full retirement age (FRA), but only if they were already drawing SSDI benefits when they started collecting DWB or widow's benefits. So, it sounds like your benefit rate may increase at least somewhat once you reach your FRA.

Best, Jerry