Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: two Social Security rules about remarriage point in opposite directions, and which one applies to you depends on whether your former spouse is alive. If you are collecting a survivor benefit on a deceased spouse’s record, remarrying at or after 60 costs you nothing. If you are collecting a divorced-spouse benefit on a living ex’s record, remarrying ends it at any age.
The two rules, side by side
| Survivor benefit (ex or spouse has died) | Divorced-spouse benefit (ex is living) | |
|---|---|---|
| Remarry before 60 | Bars the benefit while that marriage lasts | Ends it |
| Remarry at or after 60 | Disregarded entirely | Still ends it |
| Marriage length needed | 10 years if claiming as a surviving divorced spouse | 10 years |
The survivor rule
SSA’s starting point is that “a claimant for widow(er)’s or surviving divorced spouse’s benefits must be unmarried in order to be entitled.” Then comes the exception that matters:
“Disregard the remarriage of a claimant applying for benefits as a widow(er)s or surviving divorced spouse age 60 or over if the remarriage occurred after attainment of: age 60, or age 50 and the claimant was entitled to benefits as a disabled widow(er)…”
POMS RS 00207.003.A.2
Which is why the age of sixty carries weight in this decision that it carries nowhere else. A widow of 59 considering remarriage is looking at a genuinely different arithmetic from a widow of 61, and the difference can be months.
The divorced-spouse rule, which runs the other way
“The marriage of a divorced spouse will terminate entitlement to such benefits unless the marriage is to an individual entitled to widow(er)’s, mother’s, father’s, CDB, divorced spouse’s, or parents benefits.”
POMS RS 00202.045
No age threshold rescues this one. There is a narrow exception where the new spouse is themselves entitled to certain benefits, which is unusual enough that it should be confirmed with SSA rather than assumed.
The practical consequence: a benefit that was permanent while you stayed single is not, and the loss shows up in the month the marriage does.
The ten-year rule, in both directions
Divorced-spouse benefits require a marriage of “at least 10 years”, met if the divorce “became final on or after the 10th anniversary”. The same ten years apply to claiming as a surviving divorced spouse.
Worth knowing for anyone divorcing near the line, and worth knowing in reverse: a marriage that ended at nine years and eleven months produces nothing here, permanently.
What this does not change
Your own retirement benefit is yours regardless of marital status. And claiming on an ex’s record takes nothing from them and does not involve them — a worry that stops people from claiming and should not.
The wider claiming decision: how survivor benefits are best sequenced, and the switch a survivor can make that a spouse cannot. If remarriage is on the horizon, the account side needs attention too — what remarriage does to your beneficiaries.
Survivor and remarriage rules from SSA POMS RS 00207.003 and RS 00207.001; divorced-spouse termination from RS 00202.045; the duration requirement from RS 00202.005. Read August 2026. Entitlement is individual and SSA decides it — confirm your own case with them. General information, not advice.
Remarriage is one factor among several, and they do not all point the same way — the full money case for marrying later in life.