If your ex-husband or ex-wife has died and your marriage lasted at least 10 years, you may be entitled to survivor benefits on their earnings record — up to 100% of their benefit, on the same terms as a widow or widower.
Most people in this position never claim. Some assume divorce severed the right. Some assume claiming would take money from the deceased's current spouse and children. Both assumptions are wrong, and the second one is wrong in a way the SSA states explicitly.
Your claim takes nothing from anyone else
This is the fact that unlocks the rest, so it goes first. Per the SSA's survivor amounts page, household survivor benefits are capped by a family maximum — but an ex-spouse's benefit does not count toward that maximum.
Your claim does not reduce the current spouse's benefit, the children's benefits, or anyone else's. The current family will typically never even know a claim was filed. Whatever awkwardness kept you from asking, the arithmetic holds none of it: this is not a contest for a fixed pot.
The qualifying rules
From the SSA's eligibility page:
- The marriage lasted 10 years or more. Count from wedding date to the date the divorce became final. A marriage of 9 years and 8 months misses; this line is hard.
- You are 60 or older — or 50–59 with a qualifying disability.
- You did not remarry before age 60 (50 if disabled). Remarriage after 60 does not affect eligibility — you can be currently married to someone else and still claim on your late ex-spouse's record.
- Generally, caring for the deceased's child who is under 16 or disabled qualifies you regardless of your age or the marriage's length — the 10-year rule gives way in that case.
The remarriage timing deserves the same emphasis it gets for widows: at 59, a wedding date a few months out can be the difference between keeping and forfeiting a lifetime benefit.
What you receive
The same scale as a widow or widower, covered in detail in what a surviving spouse gets:
| Claiming age | Approximate share of your ex-spouse's benefit |
|---|---|
| 60 | 71.5% |
| 65 | over 90% |
| Survivor full retirement age (66–67) | 100% |
The reduction for claiming early is permanent, and there is no increase for waiting past survivor FRA.
Note what the benefit is based on: your ex-spouse's earnings record, run through the standard benefit formula. If they were the higher earner during a long marriage, this benefit can exceed anything available on your own record — which is precisely why it exists.
The switch strategy applies to you too
Everything in the widow's playbook about sequencing works identically for a surviving divorced spouse: the survivor benefit and your own retirement benefit are separate claims you can take one after the other, and the profitable order is to claim the smaller one early while the larger one grows.
If your own benefit at 70 will beat the survivor benefit, take the survivor benefit at 60 and switch at 70. If your ex-spouse's record dwarfs yours, consider the reverse. The full strategy section walks through both sequences — read it before calling, because the SSA pays whichever single benefit you request and does not volunteer the ordering.
Also carried over: the earnings test if you work before FRA (withheld months come back), and the tax treatment — a survivor benefit is ordinary Social Security for provisional-income purposes, and the calculator handles it.
While your ex-spouse is still alive
A different benefit with different rules exists for divorced spouses of living workers — up to 50% of the worker's amount rather than 100%, with the same 10-year marriage requirement but no remarriage allowance at any age while claiming on a living ex-spouse's record.
The details are beyond this article; the point worth holding is that death converts a 50%-class claim into a 100%-class claim and relaxes the remarriage rule at 60. If you passed on a divorced-spouse benefit years ago because it was small or you had remarried, the survivor version is a fresh question with better answers.
What to actually do
- Check the three gates: 10-year marriage, age 60+ (50 disabled), no remarriage before 60. Pass all three and you have a claim.
- Find your ex-spouse's Social Security number if you can — old tax returns are the usual source. The SSA can locate the record from their date of birth and parents' names if you cannot.
- Call 800-772-1213 — survivor claims are not filed online. Say explicitly that you are claiming as a surviving divorced spouse; it is a recognised category with its own rules, not a favour.
- Get your own retirement projection quoted in the same call and choose the claiming sequence deliberately.
- Do not let the current family's existence stop you. Your claim is invisible to their benefits — the SSA says so in as many words.
Rules verified against SSA pages in August 2026; all percentages statutory. Marriage-length and remarriage dates decide these cases — have the exact dates ready when you call. Not advice for your situation.
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