Social Security Spousal Benefits Calculator

A spouse's benefit is one-half of the worker's primary insurance amount (PIA), the benefit the worker gets at their own full retirement age before any reduction or delayed credit. You get the full half if you start at your full retirement age. It is the same whether the worker started early or late: the worker's own reduction and delayed credits do not change it.

If you have your own retirement benefit, SSA pays that first. When half the worker's PIA is more than your own PIA, the difference is added as a spouse's benefit. In SSA's example, a $1,250 own benefit and a $1,400 spouse's benefit pay $1,250 plus $150, $1,400 a month at full retirement age. When your own PIA is half the worker's or more, no spouse's benefit is paid.

Start before full retirement age and both parts are reduced, each under its own rule. With a $2,000 worker PIA and an $800 own PIA, starting both at 62 with a full retirement age of 67 pays $560 of your own plus $130 from the $200 difference: $690. If the worker only starts when you are 65, the spouse's part is reduced for 24 months instead of 60, and the total from then on is $726. Your own benefit stays reduced for starting at 62.

If you were born on or after January 2, 1954 and are eligible for both your own retirement benefit and a spouse's benefit, applying for either one counts as applying for both. This deemed filing rule comes from the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 and applies at any age, before or after full retirement age. Before that change, deemed filing applied only to benefits started before full retirement age, and it still works that way for people born before January 2, 1954.

Eligibility can come later. If you start your own benefit first and your spouse files for retirement afterwards, the spouse's benefit starts from the first month you are eligible for it, and it is reduced only for the months from then until your full retirement age. The calculator handles this when you choose "Starts later".

There are two exceptions. A spouse with the worker's child in care who files for spouse's benefits is not deemed to file for retirement. Someone entitled to disability benefits in the first month of a reduced spouse's benefit is not deemed to file for reduced retirement. Deemed filing never applies to survivor benefits.

The spouse's benefit stops growing at your full retirement age. Waiting longer can raise your own retirement benefit by 2/3 of 1% a month until 70, but not the spouse's part, and the worker's own delayed credits are not used for other family members' benefits (20 CFR 404.313(e)(2)). They are used for a surviving spouse, which is covered on the survivor benefits calculator.

Delayed credits on your own benefit can also use up the spouse's part. SSA figures the combined amount without your credits and then subtracts your own benefit with them. With a $2,000 worker PIA and a $700 own PIA started at 70, your own benefit is $868 and SSA adds $132, for $1,000: exactly half the worker's PIA. If your own benefit with credits is more than that, nothing is added.

The total paid on one worker's record is limited by the family maximum. The worker's own benefit is never cut for it; the spouse's and children's benefits are reduced in proportion to fit, before any reduction for age. For a worker who turns 62 in 2026, the maximum is 150% of the first $1,643 of the PIA, 272% of the PIA from there to $2,371, 134% up to $3,093 and 175% above that. With a $2,000 PIA it is $3,435.50, leaving $1,435.50 after the worker's own benefit. A spouse caring for two children (each child of a living worker gets up to 50% of the PIA) would get $478.50 each instead of $1,000.

A spouse caring for the worker's child who is under 16 or disabled, and entitled to child's benefits, is paid without the age reduction, at any age. That lasts only while such a child is in your care.

If you work while getting benefits before full retirement age, SSA may hold back part of them when your earnings pass the yearly limit: in 2026, $1 for every $2 you earn above $24,480, with a higher limit in the year you reach full retirement age. You may also get Medicare on your spouse's work record from 65. Since January 2024, a pension from work not covered by Social Security no longer reduces a spouse's benefit: the Social Security Fairness Act, signed on January 5, 2025, ended the Government Pension Offset.

It works out the spouse's benefit on a retired worker's record for someone born in 1955 or later, with deemed filing. It does not cover a child in care, disability benefits, the family maximum or the earnings test, and it treats both PIAs as fixed in today's dollars. Delayed credits are counted in full from the first month, as SSA's online calculator does for comparisons. For the exact amount, SSA can give you an estimate by phone at 1-800-772-1213 if you give them your spouse's Social Security number.

To see how much the worker gets at each claiming age, use the Social Security break-even calculator.