Americans born before January 2, 1954, still hold a Social Security option that Congress eliminated for everyone younger. At full retirement age, they can file a restricted application to collect only a spousal benefit while their own retirement benefit continues to grow through delayed retirement credits, adding roughly 8 percent per year until age 70. Because the youngest members of this group turned 72 in 2025, the window for using this strategy is narrowing fast, and anyone who has not yet acted faces a shrinking timeline to capture potentially thousands of dollars in additional lifetime income.
How the 2015 Law Split Claimants by Birth Date
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 rewrote the rules for people eligible for both a retirement benefit and a spousal benefit. Under the old system, a worker who reached full retirement age could choose to collect only the spouse’s benefit, letting the worker’s own benefit accumulate delayed retirement credits. The 2015 law changed that by expanding what Social Security calls deemed filing, which treats an application for one benefit as an automatic application for the other. The change, however, applied only to people who turned 62 on or after January 2, 2016, meaning those born on or after January 2, 1954. Anyone born before that date was grandfathered in and retained the right to restrict their claim to spousal benefits at full retirement age.
The statutory authority behind deemed filing sits in 42 U.S.C. Section 402(r), which Congress amended through the budget act to tighten coordination between retirement and spousal benefits. SSA’s internal adjudication manual, known as POMS GN 00204.035, spells out the birth-date cutoff that field offices use when processing claims; the agency’s procedures for deemed filing instruct claims representatives to check whether an applicant was born before January 2, 1954 before allowing a restricted filing. The practical result: a person born on January 1, 1954, can still restrict their application, while someone born one day later cannot and will generally be deemed to have filed for all benefits for which they are eligible.
What Delayed Credits Actually Produce
Delayed retirement credits accrue for each month a worker postpones claiming past full retirement age, up through the month before turning 70. For workers born in 1943 or later, the credit rate is two-thirds of one percent per month. Over a full year, that adds up to 8 percent. Someone who waits from age 66 to 70, for example, would see a benefit roughly 32 percent higher than the amount available at full retirement age. The SSA Benefits Planner lays out the credit schedule, and POMS RS 00615.690 defines the “increment month” concept that governs accrual and determines exactly how many months of credits a delayed claimant earns.
For a grandfathered individual, the restricted-application strategy works like this: at full retirement age, the person files for the spousal benefit only, collecting up to 50 percent of their spouse’s full retirement amount, assuming the spouse has filed for their own retirement benefit. Their own benefit, untouched, grows by 8 percent per year. At 70, they switch to their own higher benefit, locking in the delayed credits for life. The gap between the spousal check and the eventual personal benefit can be substantial, and the strategy effectively lets the person collect income during the delay period rather than simply waiting with no payments at all.
Why Eligible Claimants Face a Closing Door
The grandfathered group is shrinking because eligibility is tied to birth year, not to when someone happens to learn about the rule. People born in the early 1950s have already passed full retirement age, and many have either claimed benefits without using a restricted application or aged beyond 70, when delayed credits stop accruing. Once a person files for their own retirement benefit, they generally lose the opportunity to switch that filing into a restricted spousal-only claim, so inaction or an uninformed decision can permanently foreclose the option.
Timing also matters because the restricted strategy only makes sense if the higher benefit at 70 will materially exceed the spousal amount. Claimants must weigh their health, other income sources, and whether they can afford to live on the spousal benefit alone for several years. The Social Security Administration explains in its guidance on delaying retirement benefits that postponing can increase monthly checks but reduces the number of months over which they are paid, so the break-even point depends on longevity. For someone with a strong family history of long life and a significantly higher personal benefit, the math can favor delay; for others, claiming earlier might still be preferable.
Another reason the window is closing is practical rather than legal: confusion around the rules. Because the 2015 law created a sharp line between those born before and after January 2, 1954, many people are unsure which side they fall on or assume that all file-and-suspend style strategies disappeared. SSA staff rely on the birth-date rules in their internal manual when taking claims, but they do not automatically recommend the most advantageous strategy for each household. Grandfathered individuals who already filed early, or who never realized they could limit their claim to a spousal benefit at full retirement age, may have already missed their best chance.
For those who are still eligible and have not yet claimed, the key steps are straightforward but time-sensitive: confirm your birth date falls before the cutoff, verify your spouse has filed or will file for benefits, and compare the projected spousal amount at full retirement age with your own benefit at 70. With the youngest grandfathered claimants now in their early seventies, the opportunity to use a restricted spousal application is rapidly becoming a historical footnote rather than a live planning tool, making informed, prompt decisions more important than ever.
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