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 Some same-sex spouses have been caught up in a legal limbo while the
government sorts out eligibility questions about retroactive spousal
benefit claims.
The outcome is important, because spousal benefits are among the
most valuable features of Social Security.
Some retroactive benefit cases involve widowed spouses who were
married before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. In
others, same-sex married couples who lived in states that did not
recognize their marriages have been seeking to claim benefits going
back to the date they originally filed their claims.
Two people who have been pursuing litigation against the Social
Security Administration learned only in the last few weeks that
their benefit claims will be paid.
The SSA has sent mixed messages about its overall policy.
Its website (http://1.usa.gov/1XEowSm) states that it is working
with the Department of Justice to analyze the Obergefell decision,
and encourages people who think they may be entitled to benefits to
file immediately. Doing so preserves the filing date, which the SSA
uses to determine the possible start of benefits.
But the SSA also has a benefit determination chart on its site
(http://1.usa.gov/1TrM3Wb) that displays when same-sex marriages
were permitted in various states, as well as when a state recognized
same-sex marriages from other states or territories.
That runs contrary to an “emergency message” the SSA sent to field
offices in September that instructs staff to process pending claims
from any valid marriage and to disregard the date when a state
recognized marriages from other states or territories.
Asked about the discrepancy, an SSA spokesman only reiterated that
the agency's staff was “diligently working with Congress to analyze
the intent of the legislation and update our instructions.”
The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare is
still pushing for the SSA to agree to apply the Obergefell ruling
across the board in retroactive cases.
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“All around the country, people should be regarded as married as of
the date when they entered a valid marriage,” said Susan Sommer,
director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, which is
representing the advocacy group in one of the cases. “The Social
Security Administration has been inexplicably slow in making this
clear.”
Webster Phillips, a senior policy analyst for the committee and a
former SSA employee, acknowledged that bureaucratic wheels can grind
slowly, especially when multiple agencies of government are
involved.
But he does give the SSA credit for reaching out in the wake of
Obergefell to inform people of their rights under the ruling.
Among the widowed spouses who recently prevailed in court, Dave
Williams, who now lives in Chicago, was contesting the SSA's denial
of his claim. In 2008, he had married Carl Allen in California, but
the couple was living in Arkansas when Allen died in 2010.
Williams, 58, applied for retroactive disability benefits due to
Carl and a lump-sum death benefit, but the SSA rejected the claim
because Arkansas had not recognized their marriage as legal before
the Supreme Court ruling.
The settlement will only be worth about $4,000 to Williams, but he
is savoring the moral victory.
“Obviously, getting all these attorneys involved well exceeded the
value of my claim, but I had a point and I wanted to prove it," he
said. "I knew how unfair this was, and that if I pursued this,
hopefully many other people will benefit."
(Editing by Lauren Young, Beth Pinsker and Lisa Von Ahn)
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