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Reduction of Survivor Benefit Plan Annuity by Amount of Widow's Social Security Payment

B-192117 Sep 24, 1979
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Highlights

The widow of a retired Army member contended that her Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuity should not be reduced by the amount of Social Security benefits she received. She argued that because her deceased husband would had to have acquired a fully insurable Social Security status of 19 quarters based solely on his military service where he only had four military covered quarters, there was no basis for reducing her SBP annuity. GAO agreed with the Army position which requires an offset to be applied whenever a widow is entitled to Social Security benefits. The computation for the offset is based only on the military earnings portion of the Social Security coverage. Generally, when military covered quarters are included, the Social Security benifit is enhanced, whether or not the military covered earnings would be sufficient, alone, for the member to have achieved insured status. GAO held that the SBP annuity must be reduced by the amount of Social Security payment based solely on the deceased member's military service.

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