My girlfriend is 67, and I’d like to marry her — but if I do, will she lose the divorced spousal benefits she gets now?

Let’s pretend, for example, that Charles wants to marry his girlfriend Linda. She is 67, and collecting divorced spousal benefits.

Charles is afraid Linda will lose this money, and that’s a real possibility. However, it depends on exactly what kind of benefits Linda is getting. Plus, even if Linda does lose the money, experts say there’s more to consider when deciding whether getting married makes sense.

Will marriage cause you to lose your Social Security benefit as a divorced spouse?

First things first. Linda’s Social Security benefit may be affected by the remarriage. However, it depends on what benefits she’s collecting. Social Security provides two different kinds of benefits based on a spouse’s work record, and former spouses are also entitled to them if the marriage lasted at least 10 years. The two types are:

• Social Security spousal benefits, which are worth up to 50% of your ex’s primary insurance amount, depending on when you claim them relative to your full retirement age.
• Social Security survivor benefits, which are worth up to 100% of your deceased ex’s benefit, again depending on filing age.

Both spousal and survivor benefits may be higher than your retirement benefit, especially if you were the lower earner. But remarriage can sometimes end them.

“Generally, you will lose your spousal benefits upon getting remarried if your ex-spouse is still alive,” Corey Bates, a financial advisor at Solomon Financial, told Moneywise. However, he said that “if the ex-spouse has passed, you are actually drawing a survivor benefit that you can keep. If you are over age 60, you can still get survivor benefits even after remarrying.”

While remarriage triggers an immediate end to spousal benefits, you can keep survivor benefits if you don’t remarry before age 60, or age 50 if disabled.

“As morbid as it sounds, you could wait until your ex-spouse passes away to get remarried so you could continue to receive survivor benefits,” Melanie Musso, a finance expert with Quote.com, told Moneywise.

Can Linda get other Social Security benefits?

The good news is, while spousal benefits on her ex’s work history are at risk, Linda has options even while her ex is still alive.

“You can draw your own benefit immediately if there is one available,” Bates said. He also explained that if Linda gets remarried to Charles, she’ll eventually qualify for Social Security on Charles’ record, but it will take time. “There’s a 12-month waiting period before being able to draw benefits based on the new spouse,” he said.

Linda should look at her own benefit, if any, her spousal benefit from her ex, and the spousal and survivor benefits she’d qualify for on Charles’ work history in the future.

“It’s important to consider the value of benefits that they may lose versus the value of benefits they may gain from the new spouse,” said Christina Mehltretter, CPA, financial advisor and the COO at Carolinas Financial and Retirement Planning.

Should you get married despite losing Social Security benefits?

Since Linda’s ex husband is still alive, Linda and Charles have a tough choice to make, and there’s a lot to take into account.

“If you make the decision to get married based on the bottom line financially, you would do some math to see when you’d be eligible for spousal benefits from your new spouse and how the figures compare,” said Musso. “You can look into what you would receive by claiming your own Social Security benefits and see if the difference is small enough to give up.”

Bates agrees and pointed out some other calculations to make. “Social Security can turn into a jigsaw puzzle, so it’s important to find all the pieces and start putting them together,” he said. “Compare current income and expenses to the proposed plan of getting remarried. Consider the cash flow during the 12-month waiting period, the new spousal benefit, and the tax implications.”