I’m 62, Divorced And Struggling To Make Ends Meet. My Ex Made A $200,000+ Salary. Can I Claim His Social Security?

Preparing for retirement is not always easy, especially when you’ve spent decades putting your career on hold in order to raise a family.

Take Olivia, for example. She’s 62, divorced and getting close to retirement age. She’s struggling to make ends meet and worries her Social Security benefit won’t be enough to supplement her meagre retirement savings.

It wasn’t always like this. Olivia’s ex-husband made a $200,000+ salary and together they lived a comfortable lifestyle — enough for her to put her career on hold, at his insistence, to raise their two kids.

But then the kids grew up and her husband asked for a divorce. So, rather than settling into an early retirement with her husband, she found herself alone and struggling to get back into the workforce after a multidecade absence left a huge gap on her resume.

Olivia was eventually able to find a job but only an entry-level position. She’s managed to accrue the necessary 40 credits to receive a Social Security check in retirement, but it won’t be a big check. The Social Security Administration (SSA) calculates your benefit based on your highest 35 years of earnings — a zero is used for the years without earnings, which reduces your overall benefit.

Olivia doesn’t want to work throughout her golden years just to pay the bills. And since she put her career on hold for the sake of her family, she’s now wondering if she can claim some of his Social Security benefit. Olivia and her ex are not on good terms, so she’s afraid of making inqueries in case it gets back to him.

So, is Olivia eligible for her ex’s Social Security benefit? The answer is yes, and she can do it while her ex is none the wiser.

If you’re divorced, you may be eligible to receive Social Security benefits based on your ex’s work record. You do, however, need to meet certain criteria. For example, you must be at least 62 years old and unmarried when you become eligible for Social Security. Also, you’re only eligible if you and your ex were married for at least 10 years and divorced at least two.

You can claim Social Security based on your ex’s work record even if your ex is remarried or hasn’t yet retired. If the benefits you’re set to collect based on your own earnings record wind up totalling more than you’d collect on your ex’s record, the SSA will make you collect on your own.