Divorced Spouse Social Security: How Much Can You Get?
A divorced spouse can get up to half of an ex-spouse’s full Social Security benefit if the marriage lasted at least 10 years, you’re unmarried and 62 or older, and your ex is getting benefits, or is 62 and you’ve been divorced at least 2 years. If you have your own retirement benefit, Social Security pays that first and adds only the difference. Collecting doesn’t reduce your ex’s benefit or their current spouse’s, and your ex isn’t told.
Enter your marriage, your ex’s benefit and your own to check eligibility and the amount at the age you start.
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Check whether you qualify on an ex-spouse’s record and what you’d be paid at the age you start.
Who qualifies
The divorced spouse rules require all of these:
- You were married at least 10 years before the divorce became final.
- You aren’t married now.
- You’re 62 or older for a whole month.
- Your ex-spouse is getting retirement or disability benefits, or is at least 62 and you’ve been divorced at least 2 years.
- Your own full retirement benefit is less than half of your ex’s.
Two shorter marriages to the same person can count as one 10-year marriage if you remarried each other no later than the calendar year after the divorce, under Social Security’s prior marriage rules.
How much a divorced spouse gets
The full divorced spouse benefit is 50% of your ex’s primary insurance amount, the benefit they’d get at full retirement age, even if they started early or wait until 70. Starting before your own full retirement age reduces it by 25/36 of 1% a month for the first 36 months and 5/12 of 1% after that.
| You start at | Share of your ex’s full benefit (full retirement age 67) | On a $2,400 full benefit |
|---|---|---|
| 62 | 32.5% | $780 |
| 63 | 35% | $840 |
| 64 | 37.5% | $900 |
| 65 | 41.7% | $1,000 |
| 66 | 45.8% | $1,100 |
| 67 | 50% | $1,200 |
Swipe sideways to see the full table →
If you have your own benefit, the two parts are reduced separately. With a $700 full benefit of your own and an ex’s $2,400, starting at 64 pays your own $700 at 80% ($560) plus the $500 top-up at 75% ($375), $935 in all. The divorced spouse part stops growing at your full retirement age, though your own benefit keeps earning delayed retirement credits until 70. The early retirement reduction works the same way as for a current spouse’s spousal benefit.
If your ex hasn’t applied
You don’t need your ex to file. Once you’ve been divorced 2 years and your ex is 62, you can be paid on their record as an independently entitled divorced spouse. From then on, your ex’s earnings don’t affect your benefit, even if they keep working. Your own earnings before full retirement age still count under the earnings test.
If you were born after January 1, 1954, applying for your own benefit or the divorced spouse benefit is treated as applying for both, so you can’t take one now and switch to the other later.
What doesn’t change
- Your ex’s benefit stays the same, and so does their current spouse’s.
- Divorced spouse benefits don’t count toward your ex’s family maximum, so they don’t lower anyone else’s benefits.
- More than one ex-spouse can collect on the same record, each up to half.
- Your ex isn’t notified and doesn’t need to agree. If you don’t know their Social Security number, their name, date of birth and parents’ names help Social Security find the record.
If you remarry
Remarrying ends divorced spouse benefits on your ex’s record, unless you marry someone who gets widow’s, widower’s, parent’s or disabled child’s benefits. If the new marriage ends by divorce, death or annulment, you can apply on your ex’s record again, and you may also qualify on your new spouse’s record. Your ex remarrying doesn’t affect you.
If your ex dies
The benefit becomes a surviving divorced spouse benefit worth up to 100% of what your ex was entitled to, if you were married at least 10 years. It can start at 60 at 71.5% of the survivor benefit, or at 50 if you’re disabled, and remarrying after 60 doesn’t end it.
Since the Social Security Fairness Act took effect, a pension from work that didn’t pay Social Security tax no longer reduces divorced spouse or survivor benefits.