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When can a husband or wife start receiving his or her Social Security spousal benefit? A wife can begin collecting Social Security spousal benefits only when the following conditions are satisfied:

1. The wife is required to be at least age 62

2. The husband needs to be eligible to receive benefits, hence he should also be at least age 62. Additionally, the husband has to actually sign up for Social Security retirement benefits for his wife to collect based on his income. The husband may then decide to postpone receiving benefits. This strategy is called "file and suspend".

To provide an illustration, if the wife is 62 and the husband is 58, the wife can begin receiving benefits calculated on her income, but she cannot receive benefits based on her husband's income until he becomes 62 and starts collecting his own benefits.

Then again, if the wife is age 66 and her spouse is only 62, then the wife can begin receiving calculated on her husband's earnings (remember, the husband needs to submit an application for his Social Security benefits before his wife will be able to collect based upon his income).

In both instances stated above, the wife can begin collecting benefits calculated on her own earnings as soon as she turns 62 (assuming she's got not less than 40 quarters of earnings and also qualifies for benefits on her own), then she can switch to one half of her husband's benefit as soon as her husband becomes eligible for Social Security.

Several items to give some thought to before applying for benefits:

If a wife applies for her Social Security spousal benefit calculated on her husband's income when she attains full retirement age (age 66 for people retiring now), then she'll collect half of her husband's primary insurance amount (PIA). However, if she applies for her spousal benefit at age 62, then her benefit will be reduced to just 35% of her husband's PIA.

It doesn't help the spouse to apply after her full retirement age, as spousal benefits don't include delayed credits. On top of that, it won't help the wife if the husband waits to apply for benefits because she won't get any boost in benefits that he gets by waiting to apply.

When a spouse gets to full retirement age and becomes eligible for the spousal benefit or her own benefit, she may apply for the spousal benefit now and hold off receiving her own benefit in order to build up delayed credits on her own benefit.

A person can collect Social Security spousal benefits calculated on an ex-spouse's income as long as you were married for not less than ten years and you are also at this time unmarried. In case you have more than one ex-spouse that you meet the criteria pertaining to spousal benefits, you'll receive the largest benefit you are entitled to. One benefit that divorced spouses have over married spouses is the fact that a divorced spouse doesn't need to wait for a former husband to start collecting benefits as long as the pair is divorced for at least 2 yrs when she applies.

As a final point, the Social Security retirement program is gender neutral, so despite the fact that this article has assumed that the wife is the one applying for spousal benefits, if the wife makes more money than the husband, the husband can apply for Social Security benefits based on his wife's earnings.

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