I have no idea. I didn’t expect this to be complicated at all. I just think of my mother. She applied to receive her benefits at 62 and passed away the month before she would have received them. That’s what sucks. You work your whole life and if you die, no one gets YOUR money. I don’t want that to happen to me.
As the J.G. Wentworth commercial goes “It’s my money and I want it now!”
There’s a widow/widower benefit if they were married 10 years or more, but no benefit other than that for survivors.
IIRC when soc sec passed in the 30s, the life expectancy of a man was 66. So they didn’t worry about the fund because the men would not live one enough to get paid back.