Ask Larry

Should My Wife And I Both File & Suspend?

Ref: "...did not file and suspend by the April deadline, I recommend you file for your retirement benefit and suspend your benefit now, but request the dates for both of these requests be deemed to be the date on which you would otherwise have filed and suspended had you not been misinformed," 3Jul 16 article.

Sir,
I followed your article to this point and got a bit confused. I'm 67 and have filed and suspended before the deadline. My wife will be 65 on 23 Aug 16. Are you recommending, per the above quote, that she should also file and suspend?
The SSN rep in N. CHS, SC told me anApril that this was not possible as stated in your article (My file and suspension was back dated because I made the request prior to the deadline but they coiuld not process the request until after).
My wife will file for medicare at this week's appt. and will do nothing, for now, concerning social security until she turns 65.
Is there a reference where we can read the actual law, not on their web site? I can forsee the social security tech, and his supervisor, coming back and saying the the web site is wrong. A copy or link to the source goes a long way to remeding any misinformation.
Great article. Thank you, thank you.
Bill

Hi Bill,

If you filed your request for voluntary suspension on April 29th of this year or earlier, you have nothing to worry about. Your wife can't file & suspend until full retirement age (FRA), which is 66 for her, and she does not want to do that anyway. She should go ahead and file for Medicare at 65 as planned, then shortly before she turns age 66, she should file a restricted application for spousal benefits only. Then, if her own retirement benefit is higher when she reaches age 70, she can switch to her own account at that time.

What Larry was talking about in the reference you quoted are people who did not file & suspend prior to the April 29th deadline. In some cases, people were apparently talked out of doing that by Social Security representatives who inadvertently gave them misinformation, since the official interpretation of the new law was not decided until shortly prior to the deadline. In fact, the new law regarding voluntary suspensions has still not been updated into Social Security's operations manual. As of now, SSA employees are operating under emergency instructions regarding the new law. Here are the pertinent emergency instructions: https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/reference.nsf/links/02182016020549PM and https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/reference.nsf/links/02052016024404PM.

Best, Jerry

Category: 
Posted: 
Jul 5 2016 - 12:15pm
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