Social Security Statement in Divorce Financial Planning?
An individual’s Social Security Statement can be a valuable resource in your divorce financial planning. Make sure to gather copies of the most recent statements available and we can help you uncover a wealth of financial knowledge.
1. Earnings and employment history.
The Social Security Statement is a great place to look for historical employment earnings. It is valuable to understand the earnings history and trajectory of both parties in a divorce. If tax returns and other documentation are being with-held by your spouse the Social Security statement can provide a valuable baseline.
2. Estimated retirement and disability benefits for long term, post divorce financial planning purposes.
Understanding the long term cash flow is very important when negotiating a financial settlement. Having details of the Social Security administration’s estimated benefits can help me understand your future cash flow and plan more effectively for the future.
3. If there is a public pension.
A worker who participates in California State Teacher’s Retirement System (STRS), California Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) and many other governmental retirement systems may not have paid into the Social Security system. Some may pay into Medicare but not Social Security. You can see this if the worker’s statement has wages in the Medicare taxed earnings column but not the Social Security column. Using the Social Security statement we can uncover the existence of a previously undisclosed pension.
4. Derivative benefits available to a former spouse.
In a marriage over ten years you can receive derivative benefits on the record of your former spouse. The derivative benefit is equal to one half of the former spouse’s benefit which can be found on their annual statement. This is useful for long term planning and can be important in long term spousal support negotiations.
5. Social Security and Medicare tax details.
We often need to estimate incomes for negotiation purposes. A common mistake occurs when the 6.2% Social Security tax is applied to the worker’s entire income. Instead the tax should be applied up to the maximum wage base for Social Security taxes. If you apply the tax to $300,000 of income the net, after tax income will be understated by over $10,000 per year.
6. Possible application of Government Pension Offset Provision (GPO) or Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP).
Those workers mentioned in #3 above may find themselves subject to the GPO or WEP and end up receiving less benefits than they expected if not careful. It is always important to understand how these government provisions affect an individual in divorce. The Social Security Statement even talks about them in the bottom right hand corner of page 2 in it’s current lay-out.
7. Existence of tax deferral vehicles such as deferred compensation plans and retirement accounts.
If the numbers reported under Medicare wages don’t match those reported in the Social Security earnings column there may be tax deferral vehicles like deferred compensation plans that are being used. The worker may also have simply hit the wage base maximum after which Social Security taxes are no longer incurred but Medicare taxes are.
8. Misreported income.
In California an individual involved in divorce proceedings must file a declaration of disclosure detailing their income and expenses and sign it for accuracy under penalty of perjury. This doesn’t keep people from reporting incorrect figures. If the Social Security Statement doesn’t match what is reported on the declaration there better be an explanation.
The Social Security Administration is provides an online version of taxpayers’ statements. The online version is now available at www.socialsecurity.gov/mystatement.
Your Wellspring Divorce advisor can uncover a lot from simple and easily available documentation. Imagine what we can find with a complete and accurate set of financial documents.
