To get the answer appropriate to your circumstances, do either or both of these things:

1. Go to The United States Social Security Administration and sign up for an on-line account for both you and your wife. There you will find the answers to your questions.

2. Go to the nearest social security office. It's in Leesburg at 900 North 14th Street. They open Monday through Friday at 9:00 a.m.

You can get a lot of opinions here but either of these two sources will give you the facts.

I would just point out that, as long as you were married for at least 10 years, being divorced does not affect your eligibility for the spouse benefit.

You hopefully will avail yourself of the information and resources offered directly by the Social Security Administration. An appointment at the Leesburg office will be well worth your time. I also can't tell you how dumb (and illegal) it would be to divorce just to scam a bigger SS check.

Save your divorce money and take her on a cruise. that is not true!

I agree with everything you said, except the part about it being illegal to divorce for a larger SS check. The IRS used to treat these divorces as a sham transaction and deny the extra benefits. However, two recent Supreme Court decisions, in 2014 and 2015, are complicated, but they seem to rule that the Federal Government must acknowledge all State marriages and divorces as legal regardless of why they were made.

Benefits are individual—if you don’t need it now put off taking it until about age 72 —benefits will increase, then start leveling off. People divorce to reduce taxes, not SS benefits.

Well, not exactly true. There is no point in waiting past age 70, not 72, to start SS benefits. Your benefit does not increase after age 70.

You're correct not to wait past the age of 70, but not quite correct in saying your benefits won't (potentially) increase.

Social Security allows you to start collecting at age 62. For each year up until age 70 that you delay starting your SS collecting, they will bump up your SS yearly income stream by ~8%. SS does not bump up the stream for those who have delayed starting SS collection anytime after age 70. So it makes no sense at all not to start collecting at age 70 if you are purposely delaying. You will lose money if you delay collecting past the age of 70.

However, no matter when you start collecting, the 35-year rule of highest wages still applies when calculating what SS will pay you. *** So, say you're 75 and are still working a job that's paying you a good income. You're already collecting SS at this time. Chances are that your job/employment income at 75 may be higher than your income at, say, 40 years old. If that's true, your income at 75 will displace the lower income year you had at age 40, and your SS benefits will be recalculated based upon that amount - your highest 35 years of income. Make sense?

Example: Say your income at age 40 was one of the years SS used to calculate your SS benefit when you started collecting, as it was one of your 35 highest income years. Say you made an income of $80K at age 40. Now, you're still chugging along at age 75 working full time, and your salary at age 75 is $95K. SS will use that $95K number to take the place of your $80K salary you had at age 40, and will recalculate what they pay you monthly.

(*** If you collect SS earlier than your full retirement age and continue to work, you may be penalized on what SS will pay you based upon your salary.

Additionally, SS increases payments based upon the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). I'm not referring to that in this post.)

I wouldn't rely upon the people who work at Social Security offices, myself. Does that mean none of them have wise/accurate info? Of course not. But you just don't know. I would, instead, use an expert to help figure the contingencies out.

One of those experts is Professor Laurence Kotlikoff. He's written/co-written several books answering questions about how/when/why to take SS based upon your family's situation. He also has his own software available now that you can pay for that you just plug in the numbers and/or other information needed, and let it do its thing. You can check out one of his SS products at maximizemysocialsecurity.com. It's $40 / year, but I'm not really sure why anyone would need to pay for it more than once (more years).

If you want to go cheaper, go look for one of his Social Security books (make sure it's the latest edition current through 2019) on an online site.

Anyway, best of luck.

Social Security book
 

Rather than purchasing a book, which I did and read, then the following year there were so many changes, it no longer applied, go to a good CPA or Financial Planner who should be keeping up on all changes and can give you a good answer in real time.

you will both be able to collect your own social security.

I should have said "if your not working". This was implied by the OP.

Your example of an $80K income at age 40 and a $95K income at age 75 is not correct. The income at age 40 will be adjusted (indexed) to current dollars and will exceed a value of $95K (this year) for choosing the high 35 years. Specifically, the index factor would be 3.23 so $80K at age 40 is worth $258K today. This exceeds $95K this year.

Good catch on the ages I used and indexing. However, by my reading, your "3.23" indexing may be incorrect, as well. (I'm rushing this do to "honey do" work on the schedule, lol.)

Here's SSA's primer on indexing (snippet):

"Eligibility and indexing

Wage indexing depends on the year in which a person is first eligible to receive benefits. For retirement, eligibility is at age 62. So if a person reaches age 62 in 2020, then 2020 is the person's year of eligibility.

An individual's earnings are always indexed to the average wage level two years prior to the year of first eligibility. Thus, for a person retiring at age 62 in 2020, the person's earnings would be indexed to the average wage index for 2018."

In my example, I used the age of 75 which would be this year, 2020. Age 62, the first year of eligibility, would be 13 years prior, 2007 (and the person would have been born in 1945). According to SSA, then, the two-years-prior indexing would be indexed to the average wage index for 2005.

So, the index number should be 2.4248, no? But your main point is accurate about factoring in indexing to prior years.


Indexing Factors for Earnings

Soooo much of all the confusion and paying for advice could be eliminated if we only knew our expiration date.

Yes, good catch. It appears the indexing is to the year you hit 62 and not the year you start benefits. I believe the index factor is 2.42 as you indicated.