Hi Larry,
My wife filed for her spousal benefit at her FRA, intending to permit her own benefit accrue until she reached age 70. At age 70 (October 2021) she thought her own benefits would commence. We learned (January 2022) that she is still reciving her spousal benefit, not her own benefit. The IRS advised us that she had not applied yet for her own benefit. She can now apply for her own benefit, which should be higher than her spousal benefit, but is there a way she can recover the difference between her spousal benefit and her own benefit for the approximately four months she continued to receive her spousal benefit after reaching age 70?
Thank you for your service.

Hi. I'm afraid not. Unfortunately, the retroactivity limit on Social Security applications is 6 months. So, if your wife didn't apply for her own benefits until January 2022, then she could only claim her own benefits retroactively to July 2021.

To explain why a new application was required for your wife to claim her own benefits, Social Security applications are normally considered to be applications for any type of Social Security benefits for which the person is eligible. Therefore, the only way for a person who's eligible for more than one type of benefit (e.g. spousal, survivor, retirement) to claim a single benefit type is by excluding other benefit types from the scope of their application. Thus, when your wife applied for spousal benefits, she would have to have excluded her own Social Security retirement benefits from the scope of that application. Otherwise, she would have awarded her own benefits back when she applied for spousal benefits.

Best, Jerry