Q. When a spouse dies and he is a retired federal employee, does the surviving spouse get Social Security benefits based on his benefits before the windfall was taken out?
A: Yes. The windfall elimination provision doesn’t apply to Social Security spousal death benefits.
Windfall elimination provision
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You are not affected by the WEP. The WEP affects employee benefits, where the employee has a pension like CSRS where they didn’t pay Social Security. You may be affected by the GPO, Government Pension Offset, when you try to collect on Social Security survivor benefits, if you also receive a pension where you did not pay Social Security. Here is a link to the Social Security publication regarding that: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf