Social Security Issues When Getting Divorced

There are two issues that arise with social security. First, if the parties expect to receive – or are already receiving – different amounts of social security benefits, they may find that the judge will order social security equalization. In fact, if one party asks for it, the judge will almost certainly do so if they have been married a long time. The way that social security equalization works is that the judge will compare the payments received by each spouse and order the spouse receiving more to pay the other an amount as spousal maintenance (alimony) to equalize the amount of the benefit each receives.

The other issue is that if the parties have been married for ten years or more, a spouse is entitled to chose their own benefit or one half of the other spouses’ benefit amount. Divorce actually has nothing to do with this – except that if the receiving spouse remarries before age 60, those benefits will cease.