Collecting Social Security

[JamesVincent]

I know several worked for the IRS but I can't remember if anyone had worked for SS. However, among the regulars here are some of the sharpest people I know when it comes to dealing with the government in any way so here goes.

I have a friend from church that I do a lot of work for on her house. She is 68 and a widow, her husband passed when she 66. Before the time of his passing, at 65, they had applied to and collected his Social Security. Less then a year later he developed cancer and lost his fight within 6 months. While they had Medicare and a Medicare supplement she was still left with a good number of bills that drained their actual savings. Here are my couple of questions:

Is she able to claim her own Social Security, either fully or partly, on top of his? When I was helping my mother get hers straight, IIRC, they told her that she could collect hers and part of my stepfathers. Is this the case? Which leads to my second question:

She was also married and divorced previously, and had been married to the first husband for 22 years. Is she able to, if unable to collect her own, file against her first husbands?

The biggest reason I'm asking is she is unable to take care of her house on her own since her husband passed and has to pay others, like me, to do a lot of the stuff that needs to be done. I've done quite a bit on the house so far but a lot had been neglected for years before her husband passed and needs some serious work, maybe even beyond what I can do for her. So she is faced with the choice of selling her house to live in a retirement setting or of paying for the needed repairs, which she can't afford to do with her money situation. She still has a mortgage on the house and all of her bills are caught up but every bit of work done has to come out of her actual retirement funds and they won't last forever. I would hate to see her face the choice of having a decent place to live out her years or sell the house she loves and move into a community, which she doesn't want to do. She only had one son, who lives 3 hours away, and needs the help.

[chronistra]

I'm no great expert on SocSec; I can tell you what I think I know, but I'm sure there are others on here with far more expertise.

My understanding is that she can collect a benefit equal to the largest sum any of the three (her, her husband, and the ex) could have collected on their own earnings record. That is, if her benefit based on her own work history was $500/mo. and hubby was eligible for $1200/mo., she could collect her $500 and a widow's benefit of $700 (total $1200). If first husband's earnings record was higher than the second, she could collect as his survivor, but she can't collect on both husbands at the same time.

That's my understanding, but I'll defer to others with more experience.

You might also investigate what options your local/state government can provide. For example, in my town the Community Redevelopment Dept offers both small grants and larger loans for low-income homeowners to finance urgent repairs. In the case of the loans, the city takes a mortgage on the property, but no repayment is required until it is sold, and they'll forgive up to half of the loan if you live there for a certain number of years afterwards. Also, if she's got substantial equity in the house, even with an existing mortgage she may be eligible for a reverse mortgage and/or home equity loan.

[JamesVincent]

Thanks Chronistra. According to Social Security she was supposed to, at the time of her husband's death, been eligible and automatically enrolled for survivor benefits. She is not sure if that happened or not so I advised her to call SS and talk to them about it. There are several programs available like you mentioned out here and I, again, advised her to look into some of the grant programs. However, it's not that the house is structurally unsound, it's more that she is unable to keep up with a lot of the maintenance without help and there are some things that have to be done. For example, at one point they had had a small concrete patio enclosed. The contractor who did the original work did a poor job all around and there are areas that I have found where water ran down into the walls and have rotted the walls from the inside. To fix it would require ripping out a good chunk of the walls and replacing the drywall on top of the actual repairs to the roof that caused the leak and the studs that have probably rotted as well. At some point all that will have to be done or the enclosure will be unsafe and it's her primary entrance to the house. Several of the programs I have seen are for necessary repairs to the structure and I'm not sure that qualifies. I've been doing a lot of the outside maintenance, landscaping, gutters, things like that for very little but I can't afford to get into something that's gonna be a major job without making enough to cover it and she can't afford it.

And it's not just her, several people out here are in situations similar and it's tough to be able to help them when limited funds are available. I love to help people but I have a business to run and kids to feed so there's only so much I can do. It would be nice to see more programs to help people in situations like that out there. Or maybe a program that would pay people like me to go out and do the repairs for the homeowner, kinda like the FHA loans where they paid you to have the work done on the house after you bought it.