Clear Money Guide
Guide and tool overview
See the questions covered here, then open the interactive utility.
Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: the Government Pension Offset no longer reduces a spousal benefit because you have a government pension. But a second rule, which was always there and applies to everybody, still decides whether there is a spousal benefit at all: if your own Social Security amount is at least half of your spouse’s, there is nothing extra to pay. Many people who expected a windfall from the repeal run into this instead.
What you would actually receive
The rule that decides it
A spousal benefit requires that you
“Not be entitled to a RIB or DIB based on a primary insurance amount (PIA) that equals or exceeds one-half the NH’s PIA”
POMS RS 00202.001 B.3
“NH” is the worker whose record you are claiming on. Read plainly: measure half of their amount against your own. If yours is equal or larger, the spousal benefit does not exist for you — and this has nothing whatever to do with your pension. It is the ordinary rule, and it would have applied identically had you spent your whole career in covered private-sector work.
This distinction is worth holding onto, because it is easy to experience the second rule as the first one coming back. It has not. The Government Pension Offset used to take two-thirds of your government pension off the spousal benefit, very often reducing it to zero. That is gone. How blunt that offset was is worth reading if you were on the receiving end of it.
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.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here. You stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions (age, investable assets, location), then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button. Submitting the form does not guarantee an adviser or a match. This matching form is not tax or legal advice.
Where the repeal genuinely pays
The people who gain most are those with little or no Social Security record of their own and a spouse with a substantial one — a career teacher married to a career private-sector earner is the archetype. With no own record, the whole of half the spouse’s amount is now payable where it was previously offset away. Run it above.
Two mechanics that catch people
Deemed filing applies here, and it does not apply to survivors. For anyone born on or after 2 January 1954, claiming either your own retirement benefit or a spousal benefit is generally treated as claiming both, in the first month you are eligible for either. So the two cannot be sequenced against each other the way a survivor benefit can. Choosing when to file is therefore a single decision covering both.
Retroactivity is limited and asymmetric. SSA allows up to six months of back payments on an unreduced spouse’s benefit, and states flatly that “We do not allow retroactivity for reduced RIB benefits”. A benefit you have not claimed is not being paid, and waiting does not bank it.
Before you file
The timing question is the same one every couple faces, now that the offset is not answering it for you: 62 against 67, and what the breakeven looks like once the money is charged a return. If your pension is a federal one, the annuity side and how the three incomes sequence are the companion pieces.
Repeal effective date from SSA POMS GN 02608.100 (batch run 09/12/2025); the dual-entitlement requirement from POMS RS 00202.001 B.3 (batch run 04/15/2026); deemed filing from POMS GN 00204.035; retroactivity from POMS GN 00204.030. Read August 2026. Primary insurance amounts come from your Social Security statement. General information, not advice, and not a benefit determination.