Surviving Spouses in Retirement
Most retirement accounts and Social Security will allow you access to your deceased spouse’s benefits. However, this may be another case of just because you can doesn’t mean you should. There are many factors that should be taken in to account before taking benefits based off of your spouse’s income. For IRA’s you have to be careful on when you take survivors benefits. If you transfer their IRA in to your own before you yourself are of retirement age then you will see penalty fees just as if you were accessing your own retirement account before coming of age. There are ways to get around this and you must be careful to make sure you follow every rule to a T to make sure you get what you are entitled to. For more information visit this article by Dan Moisand with Market Watch.
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