Nov
12
2011
By Guest (not verified)
My fiances wife died and his 3 children are collecting survival benefits for their mother. But I'm worried that if we get married that the children will lose their benefits, which is being saved for their future. I really want to get married but i don't want to take from the kids the only help their mom left them.
Effect of remarriage on child benefits
Marrying your fiance may affect his ability to collect survivor benefits based on her work record. However, assuming the likely case that his retirement benefit based on his work record will be higher than his widower benefit based on her record, the remarriage will not negatively affect him.
His remarriage would have no effect on the benefits being paid to his children.
http://www.ssa.gov/survivorplan/ww&os2.htm#remarriage
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/439
confused...
he doesn't collect widower benefits only the kids collect benefits so would that mean that a remarriage would only effect him if he were collecting benefits for her, but the kids benefits would not be effected at all?
Remarriage may affect future ability to get survivor benefits
I just wanted to point out that his remarriage may affect his ability to collect widower benefits (ex. at age 60) based on his former wife's work record.
This is a bit unusual, but would affect him, for example, if he was a stay-at-home father and his former wife was the primary bread winner.
Remarriage will not affect survivor benefits for the children.
There is one other angle to this...
It sounds like this doesn't apply in this case, but some surviving spouses receive survivor benefits as a kind of "baby sitter allowance". This is to compensate the surviving spouse as they care for surviving children. This "baby sitter allowance" continues until the last surviving child reaches age 16.
However, the surviving children continue getting their own survivor benefit until age 18 (or sometimes 19).
Please contact Social Security for your particular case.
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/185