Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
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Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer: The single-life annuity pays more each month and stops at your death. The joint and survivor form pays less and continues to your spouse. The reduction is a premium — you are buying an income that begins if you die first, and the plan is charging you for it out of every monthly payment. Framed that way the question is not which number is bigger, it is whether your household needs that insurance and whether the plan is a competitive place to buy it.
What the law requires the plan to hand you
IRC §401(a)(11) conditions plan qualification on providing a qualified joint and survivor annuity, and IRC §417(a)(1)(A) gives the participant the right to “elect at any time during the applicable election period to waive the qualified joint and survivor annuity form of benefit”, to elect a qualified optional survivor annuity instead, and to “revoke any such election at any time during the applicable election period.” Two structural facts follow, and both matter more than they sound.
The survivor form is the default and the single-life form is the waiver. The statute is not neutral between them: getting the higher monthly figure requires an affirmative election plus your spouse’s consent in the form §417(a)(2) specifies. And the right to revoke runs only through the applicable election period — the flexibility in §417(a)(1)(A)(iii) is real, and it has an expiry.
The election, read as a purchase
| Single life | Joint and survivor | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly amount | Higher | Lower — and the gap is the premium |
| What stops at your death | Everything | Nothing, up to the survivor percentage the plan states |
| Who bears the risk that you die first | Your spouse | The plan |
| Requires spousal consent to elect | Yes — it is the waiver | No — it is the default form |
| Reversible | Only within the applicable election period | |
Coordinate this with the rest of your retirement plan
A pension election is usually a one-time choice you cannot revisit, and an adviser can weigh it against your other income, your spouse’s position and how long the money has to last, though that does not replace the numbers in your own plan documents.
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The three facts that decide it, none of which are the monthly numbers
Whether your spouse has independent income. A spouse with their own pension and their own Social Security record needs less insurance than a spouse who spent those years out of the paid workforce. This is a household balance-sheet question, and it is answerable before you look at the election form.
Relative health and age, honestly assessed. The premium buys protection against one specific sequence — you dying first. The less likely that sequence, the worse the purchase, and there is no way to make that assessment tactful.
What the same protection costs elsewhere. The plan is one seller of survivor income and not necessarily the cheapest. The honest comparison is the reduction the plan is charging against what the same protection would cost bought separately — and that comparison needs a real quote rather than an assumption in either direction.
The comparison error that quietly decides most of these. People compare the lump-sum offer against the single-life monthly figure, because it is the largest number on the page. If your household actually needs the survivor form, that is a comparison against a benefit you were never going to elect. Run the break-even against the figure you would truly have taken.
The asymmetry that should drive the decision. Take the monthly annuity and you can generally change your mind about how to SPEND it but not about whether to have taken it. Take the lump sum and the monthly benefit is gone. Pension elections are made once, at a stated annuity starting date, and the plan is not obliged to let you unwind one afterwards. That is why the questions worth the most attention are the ones on this page rather than the projected-return arithmetic — the arithmetic can be redone next year, and the election cannot.
Sources
IRC §417(a)(1)(A) and §417(a)(3)(A) for the written explanation; IRC §417(a)(2) for the consent conditions; IRC §401(a)(11). Retrieved from the United States Code, July 2026.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax, legal or investment advice. A pension election turns on your own plan document, your own health and marital situation, and figures your plan must give you in writing — and this site states no interest rate, no conversion factor and no break-even age, because every one of those is specific to your plan and a borrowed number is worse than none.
Related
Guides › Pension and Annuity Decisions
If the money is in the TSP, the rulebook is its own: the 10% penalty turns on the year you separated, not your age when you withdraw, and that exception does not survive a rollover to an IRA. What keeping it or moving it costs puts the difference in dollars.
If the pension is a federal one, the rulebook is its own: what the FERS annuity actually comes to (1% a year, 1.1% at 62 with 20 years, less five-twelfths of a percent for every full month under 62), and the separation choice that decides whether federal health insurance survives it.
If the pension is a military one: retired pay is 2.5% or 2.0% a year of your high-3, and Guard service divides points by 360 — and the survivor election has a statutory price rather than an insurer’s: what SBP costs and what it buys.
There is a third option this comparison does not contain: take the single-life pension and buy life insurance to cover the survivor instead. It works only under conditions worth checking before anyone sells it to you — the policy has to outlive the pensioner, and the premium is not the whole cost.