Social Security’s inspector general found that the agency shortchanged widows and widowers and left others without a documented chance to raise their pay. In an April 23 report, auditors estimated SSA underpaid 8,618 survivors about $50.4 million. They also projected that another 5,367 could have collected $113.8 million more by delaying their own retirement claims until age 70.
Waiting until 70 for the larger check
The audit by the Social Security Office of the Inspector General looked at widow(er)s who filed for survivor and retirement benefits in the same month. Auditors could not confirm whether employees told sampled beneficiaries they could file for widow(er) benefits only and delay retirement benefits, because those talks were not consistently documented, according to the April 23 release.
SSA says survivor payments start at 71.5 percent of a spouse’s benefit and rise the longer a widow or widower waits, reaching up to 100 percent at full retirement age for survivor benefits. The two payments are not combined. SSA says a survivor can move from the survivor check to a larger retirement benefit at 70.
That is the choice a widow with her own work record faces. Start the survivor check and let her own retirement benefit grow, or file for both in the same month. The full report says filing both in the same month can eliminate the option of delaying the retirement benefit to 70.
SSA’s examples show how much timing moves the survivor check: over 75 percent at age 61, over 80 percent at 63 and over 90 percent at 65. The agency’s page says a survivor picks whichever payment is better and can change later. That flexibility is what the undocumented conversations may have left out.
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The report sampled 50 widow(er)s from a population of 7,253 who became entitled to both benefits in the same month. For 37 of them, employees did not document whether filing options were discussed. From that, OIG projected that 5,367 widow(er)s could have received $113.8 million more had they delayed their retirement claims until 70.
The $113.8 million is a projection of what delay could have added, not a finding that SSA owes the money. It rests on documentation gaps and a scenario in which each widow(er) waited. The report also says SSA will not reopen the 37 claims in that review because of administrative finality rules.
The calculation error behind the $50.4 million
The $50.4 million is also an estimate. Auditors estimate SSA underpaid 8,618 widow(er)s by about that amount because employees did not apply the correct calculation for survivors whose spouses died before age 62.
SSA paid 59 percent of the sampled beneficiaries the correct monthly amount. The other 41 percent were either paid incorrectly or lacked documentation showing whether employees told them their filing options. Across the two populations, the sample came to 120 beneficiaries, of whom 71 were handled correctly.
When a worker dies before 62, the benefit is figured with wage indexing tied to the year the survivor became eligible or the year the worker would have turned 62, not the year of death. That changes the index and can raise the monthly amount. The report found 11 of 70 sampled cases underpaid, and one overpaid by about $9,000.
One case in the full report shows the size of a single miss. The wage earner died at 32, and an employee used the death year, 1992, instead of the widow’s first eligibility year, 2009. She was paid $1,856 a month instead of $2,170, a $314 difference, and was underpaid $35,247 from December 2016 through January 2025.
The report projected roughly $99,000 more in underpayment over that widow’s remaining lifetime if nothing changed. Those 70 cases were drawn from a population of 54,843 widow(er)s whose benefits were not adjusted when the spouse died before 62. The report could not determine why the 11 underpaid cases were missed.
What SSA agreed to fix
Michelle L. Anderson, Assistant Inspector General for Audit as First Assistant, put it this way in the release: “Providing beneficiaries the accurate monthly benefit amount is vital to protecting the public’s earned benefits.” The audit ran from October 2024 through January 2026.
The inspector general recommended that SSA act for widow(er)s in the sample and the wider group who may be eligible for higher benefits because a spouse died before 62. It also called for controls so employees check whether the correct calculation applies when a survivor claims on a deceased worker’s record before 62.
A third recommendation asks SSA to build system alerts that remind employees to discuss filing options when a claimant lists a deceased spouse or files widow(er) and retirement claims in the same month, and to document those talks. SSA agreed to implement the recommendations.
The release says these findings match earlier audits, and that the agency still needs improvements despite earlier recommendations. The audit describes no claim process for individual widows. The question for a survivor is whether the first filing conversation covered the choice between starting now and waiting to 70.
Deciding when to switch from a survivor check to a widow’s own?
A survivor who files for both benefits in the same month can lose the chance to let a retirement benefit grow to 70, and the inspector general found that conversation often went undocumented. Once the claim is locked in, the larger check may be out of reach.
The Social Security Claiming & Family Benefits Kit includes a claiming calculator in Excel for claiming age, break-even and survivor benefits, plus spousal and survivor sequencing worksheets. The calculator lets a widow compare starting the survivor check now against waiting for her own at 70.
Run the survivor-first versus own-benefit-first numbers in the claiming calculator →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Steps to Stop the Scams That Took $7.7 Billion From Seniors
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
