Obviously, one of the eligibility rules is that a person must be alive. And again, you must be alive for the entire month to get the benefit for that month. So, for example, because your aunt died in April, whether it might have been April 2 or April 30, she (and her estate) is not due the April Social Security check. In other words, the check that came in May (the April benefit) must be returned.
Another way to put that is this: Social Security checks are not prorated. They never have been, and probably never will be. But what most people don’t think about is the flip side of that coin. The law does allow a person to get their first Social Security check for the month they are due benefits, even though they might not be eligible until later in the month. For example, my brother was born on June 29. He took his benefits at age 65. And he got his first Social Security check for the entire month of June, even though he was 65 for just two days of the month.
Think of it this way: the law presumes you'd rather have that extra benefit upfront while you are alive as opposed to your family getting the proceeds of your last check after you are dead!
Because you don’t have your own Social Security, you must be getting spousal benefits on your husband’s record. And in that case, now that he has died, you will just be automatically converted from wife’s benefits to widow’s benefits. Your new benefit rate will probably be the same amount your husband was getting at the time of death.
And in your case, the fact that Social Security benefits are not prorated is both good and bad news for you. You already learned the bad news. Because your husband wasn’t alive the entire month of May, his May Social Security check had to be returned. So, what’s the good news? Well, you are going to get a widow’s benefit for the entire month of May, even though you were a widow for only three days of the month.
Before I do that, I must clarify one misconception about this one-time $255 death benefit. It is not, and never was intended to be, a “burial benefit.” And good thing it isn’t because $255 would barely cover the cost of flowers at most funerals today!
This death benefit is a holdover from the very earliest days of the Social Security program. It started out as a means of refunding a small portion of the taxes a person paid into the Social Security system if he or she died before having a chance to collect monthly benefits. Over the years, that simple “refund” of taxes that was paid only to the family members of non-beneficiaries morphed into a death benefit payable to the family members of just about everyone.
The benefit amount was locked in at $255 about 40 years ago. Since then, it’s never gone up and has never gone down. Attempts are occasionally made to simply eliminate this almost worthless payment. But every time that happens, senior citizen groups inundate Congress with letters of protest and so the little death benefit remains in law.
Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration did have the guts (although others would say the gall) to take on those seniors, and they lobbied Congress to at least nibble away at the death benefit. They changed the law to say that the death benefit can be paid only to a surviving spouse WHO WAS LIVING WITH THE DECEASED AT THE TIME OF DEATH. Your mother-in-law was apparently not living with your father-in-law. (You said she was in a nursing home for the past decade.) So, she isn’t due the money.
And by the way, if someone would appoint me the king of Social Security, I would do one of two things about the program’s so-called death benefit. Either I would simply eliminate it because it’s kind of a worthless and embarrassing benefit anyway, or I would make it meaningful by raising it to $2,500 and paying it to anyone (not just a spouse) who is the executor of the deceased’s estate.
