Latest news with #widowed
Health Line
2 days ago
- Health
- Health Line
Divorced Spouse Eligibility for Medicare
You're eligible for Medicare if your current or former spouse has worked in the United States and paid taxes for at least 10 years. Whether or not you'll pay a premium for Part A depends on a few more factors. Original Medicare includes Part A, which is hospital insurance, and Part B, which is medical insurance. Once you qualify for Part A, you can also sign up for Part B. If you're married or were married to someone who meets the eligibility criteria, you should still qualify for Original Medicare, even if you don't meet the requirements yourself. That said, depending on some criteria, you may have to pay a premium for Part A. Read to learn how you can qualify for Medicare after divorcing a beneficiary spouse and what you need to know about potential costs. Can a divorced spouse get benefits from Medicare? Generally, you're eligible for Medicare if you're over 65 or younger and receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) as long as you've worked in the United States and paid taxes for at least 10 years. However, if you're divorced and ineligible for Medicare, you may still qualify for Medicare through your former spouse's eligibility, provided your marriage lasted at least 10 years. Similarly, if you're widowed, you can qualify for your deceased spouse's Medicare if you are currently single, were married for at least 9 months before their passing, and they qualified for Social Security benefits. How do I qualify for divorced spouse benefits? If you were married to your beneficiary spouse for at least 10 years, you're also eligible for Medicare. However, most people don't pay a premium for Part A. Whether you'll have to pay it depends on your former spouse's work and tax history as well as a few other factors. You can receive Medicare Part A without any cost at the age of 65 based on your former spouse's work history if you fulfill these requirements: Your marriage lasted a minimum of 10 years. You're currently not married. Your former spouse is at least 62 years old and qualifies for Social Security or Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) benefits. You qualify for Social Security benefits through your former spouse's work record, even if you haven't applied for them yet. If your former spouse has passed away, you may still be eligible for premium-free Part A as a divorced surviving spouse if: You're 65 years old or older, or you're younger and meet disability eligibility criteria. Your marriage lasted at least 10 years. You're currently unmarried. Your former spouse had sufficient work history under Social Security or in a Medicare-covered government job. If you don't meet these criteria, you can still get Part A by paying a monthly premium during specific enrollment periods. Even if eligible through your former spouse, you must enroll separately. How much does Medicare cost if I'm divorced from my spouse? Even with premium-free Part A, you'll still have to meet a deductible before you get coverage. In 2025, this is $1,676. Once you're eligible for Part A based on your former spouse's eligibility, you are then eligible to purchase Medicare Part B (medical insurance) for a monthly premium, which in 2025 starts at $185. You then also have the option of signing up for Medicare Advantage (Part C), which is an alternative to Original Medicare (parts A and B), and for Medicare Part D, which covers prescription drugs. The costs of these privately run plans vary by plan. As with Part A, each spouse must enroll and pay for their own Medicare Part B, C, or D plan. Takeaway Original Medicare consists of parts A and B. If you're divorced from someone who meets the eligibility criteria, you should still qualify for Original Medicare as long as your marriage lasted 10 years, even if you don't meet the requirements yourself. However, depending on how your former spouse qualifies for Medicare, you might need to pay a premium for Part A. After obtaining Part A, you can enroll in the other parts of Medicare. The information on this website may assist you in making personal decisions about insurance, but it is not intended to provide advice regarding the purchase or use of any insurance or insurance products. Healthline Media does not transact the business of insurance in any manner and is not licensed as an insurance company or producer in any U.S. jurisdiction. Healthline Media does not recommend or endorse any third parties that may transact the business of insurance.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brooklyn and beyond: Colm Tóibín's best books – ranked!
This dispatch from what we might call the extended Colm Tóibín universe is set near the same time and in the same place as his earlier novel Brooklyn (one character appears in both books). It's the story of a widowed woman who struggles to cope with life after love. If it lacks the drama of some of Tóibín's other novels, the style is impeccable as ever, with irresistibly clean prose that reports emotional turmoil masked by restraint. There is no ornate showing off. 'People used to tease me for it, saying: 'Could you write a longer sentence?'' Tóibín has said. 'But there's nothing I can do about it.' This short novel began as a play, which later became a Broadway flop. Tourists, observed Tóibín, are 'going to take in only one Broadway show, and Bette Midler had just opened around the corner'. Jesus's mother Mary is recalling the events around his crucifixion. Tóibín's Mary is not meek and mild, but hardened by her experience, suspicious of his miracles and despairing of the followers who will take her son away from her. This is a rare first-person narrative for Tóibín, and his quiet style sometimes muffles the emotions Mary feels at Jesus's suffering. In the end it's a book not just about biblical figures, but about how strange our children become to us. Tóibín's second novel shows that his 'deadpan' style was there from the start: 'you're never sure where the laughter is going to come from or where the sadness is', as he described it to the Paris Review. There's more sadness here than laughter – apart from the joke that it always seems to be raining. It's the story of High Court judge Eamon Redmond, a conservative man in 1980s Ireland, where the next generation – including his children – is agitating for reform on social issues such as divorce and abortion. This book is also, says Tóibín, 'the most direct telling of the grief and numbness' he felt as a child at his 'abandonment' when his mother left the family for many months to attend his sick father in hospital. Tóibín's motto might be: If it's not one thing, it's your mother. Redoubtable mothers loom large in his work, and this is a whole book of stories about mothers and their sons. The best are novella-length – Tóibín is a novelist at heart – including one which features early appearances of Nancy and Jim from Brooklyn. These are stories of complicated love, laced with dark comedy. In one, a gangster with a drunken mother is selling stolen paintings to two Dutch criminals. One of the men, his associate tells him, 'could kill you in one second with his bare hands'. 'Which of them?' he asks. 'That's the problem,' comes the reply. 'I don't know.' If Tóibín's fiction tends toward low-key gloom, this novel about a gay Argentinian man of English ancestry is his happiest. Richard Garay frequently enjoys himself, especially now that his mother is dead. There's a gusto in his resentment of her ('I am using, with particular relish, the heavy cotton sheets she was saving for some special occasion') and an animal delight in his appreciation of the bodies of the men he loves. Even the darker stuff here – abductions, the fallout of the Falklands war – is described with almost cheerful energy. It catapulted Tóibín from acclaimed literary novelist to bestseller, with the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman in 1950s Ireland who seems utterly passive in her life. At least, that is, until she goes to the US – the sea crossing is a comic highlight, featuring motion sickness and a shared bathroom – and defies her family's plans for her. Tóibín's sensitive touch means Eilis feels like a real person, even when we want to give her a good shake. Adapted into a film in 2015 starring Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn delivers satisfying emotional tension despite its restrained heroine. It's little wonder it has become Tóibín's best-loved book. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Last year's sequel to Brooklyn takes up Eilis's story 20 years on. It's a more rounded novel, with a greater range of characters fully on display, and Eilis seems to have found some bottle in the intervening years. 'Can you not control her?' her brother-in-law asks her husband, when she argues with their father. It's also a portrait of a changing Ireland in the 1970s. And although Tóibín dislikes traditional historical fiction ('I hate people 'capturing the period''), he does capture the period beautifully, with a wealth of detail – including the introduction of the toasted cheese sandwich to Ireland's pubs. Tóibín's fourth novel is clear, contained and complex. It is set in his literary comfort zone of coastal County Wexford, but there's nothing complacent about this story, where traditional Ireland – singalongs with bodhrán drums – meets the modern crisis of Aids. It tells of three generations of women trying to get along together as a young man in their family dies. But it is also an acutely observed portrait of parenting young children (more mothers and sons), a retelling of the Greek myth of Orestes, Electra and Clytemnestra, and a rendering of Tóibín's own childhood suffering around the sickness and death of his father. 'I think if you're not working, as a novelist, from some level of subconscious pain,' he has said, 'then a thinness will get into your book.' Tóibín's longest novel is also one of his most gripping. This book about Thomas Mann is an exceptional achievement in imaginative empathy, covering six decades of the writer's life: his self-regard, his literary genius, and the concealed love for beautiful young men that he subsumed into works such as Death in Venice. Tóibín shows Mann as calcified by his public austerity (at his mother's funeral, his daughter sees him cry for the first time). Tóibín likes to poke fun at his own austere reputation. He writes, he once said, on a chair that is 'one of the most uncomfortable ever made. After a day's work, it causes pain in parts of the body you did not know existed' – but 'it keeps me awake'. Tóibín's masterpiece – to date – explores the inner life of Henry James, a man who was 'a mass of ambiguities'. The novel covers five years in James's life, beginning with the failure of his 1895 play Guy Domville, but its scope is vast, teasing apart the public and private man. 'Everyone he knew carried within them the aura of another life which was half secret and half open, to be known about but not mentioned.' James loves gossip and secrets but keeps his own hidden. 'It was the closest he had come,' he recalls, thinking of one abandoned episode of attraction to another man, 'but he had not come close at all.' The Master is subtle, funny, ingenious and emotionally wrenching. Tóibín even took enough influence from James to – finally – write in long sentences. To explore any of the books featured, visit Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘She's in a shaky marriage that could soon end': Will my daughter's husband get my IRA when I die?
I'm 84 and widowed. My daughter is the beneficiary of my IRA and the successor trustee for my revocable living trust. She's in a shaky marriage that could soon end in divorce. How can I prevent her soon-to-be ex-husband from claiming part of her inherited IRA and assets in the trust? Aging Father 'We are blessed': My husband is inheriting a $1 million home. Should he put it in my name too? 17 bargain dividend stocks that are primed for growth — consider this before you buy 'Today is my 61st birthday': I have my ex-spouse's Social Security benefits. Should I retire at 65 and travel? 'I'm single': At 70, I have $500,000 in stocks and $220,000 in savings. How do I invest my $130,000 windfall? Stay buckled up — the market ride is going to get wilder still, says this strategist Related: 'I'm afraid to ask her': My stepmother won't show me my father's will. What now? Expect the best. They may stay together and live happily ever after. But prepare for the worst. If their marriage is on shaky ground, chances are they're headed for divorce court. Unfortunately, as much as we would all like to maintain peace and harmony in our lives, splitting assets is never easy and can lead to a lot of painful negotiation. For that reason, you are smart to think ahead. You've worked hard for your retirement savings and other assets, and I can understand that you would not like them to be divided 50/50 between your daughter and her husband (should they split). Inheritance, as regular readers of this column will know, is generally considered separate (not marital) property. Unless your daughter decided to commingle inherited funds in a joint account with her husband, they would remain separate in the event they divorced. Those tax implications will vary, all depending on the type of account she inherits. 'The IRA balance must be emptied within 10 years; this distribution period begins the year after the original account owner's death,' U.S. Bank USB says. If you were already taking RMDs, your daughter must also take a minimum distribution each year, beginning the year after your death, it adds, but RMDs are not required annually if you were not subject to distributions before your passing away. There are exceptions to the 10-year rule for non-spouse beneficiaries, it adds. They include minor children of the original account holder, a chronically ill or disabled beneficiary, or a beneficiary who is no more than 10 years younger than the original account owner. 'Non-spouse beneficiaries can open and transfer funds into an inherited IRA, take a lump-sum withdrawal or turn down the inheritance,' the bank adds. 'Spouse beneficiaries can roll the funds into an existing IRA account or open a new account.' A revocable trust that becomes irrevocable upon your death would ensure that your funds were only accessed by the beneficiary — your daughter in this case (and not her husband). It would also protect those assets from creditors. 'To maximize protection, the trust can be structured as a discretionary trust, where the trustee has complete discretion over distributions,' according to Selzer Gurvitch, a law firm based in Bethesda, Md. 'This type of trust can ensure that assets are not considered marital property in the event of a divorce,' it says. 'Another option is a spendthrift trust, which prevents creditors, including a divorcing spouse, from accessing the trust assets.' 'Protecting your children's inheritance from the potential complications of divorce is an important aspect of estate planning,' it adds. 'Trusts, prenuptial agreements, careful asset titling, and gifting strategies all play a role in ensuring that your hard-earned wealth remains in the family.' I hope your daughter lives happily ever after, no matter what she chooses. Related: My father died, leaving everything to my 90-year-old stepmother. Do I have a right to ask her if I'm in her will? I'm the executor of my mother's will. She left $160,000 in a secret savings account. Should I tell my siblings? 'She has been telling him lies': My sister convinced my father to sign everything over to her. What can I do? My father died, leaving everything to my 90-year-old stepmother. Do I have a right to ask her if I'm in her will? Don't miss: 'I don't want to end up with stalkers': Should I tell my heirs that I'm writing a will and how much they can expect to inherit? My wife and I are in our late 60s. Do I sell stocks to pay our $30,000 credit-card debt — or do it gradually over 3 years? I put my $500K inheritance into a joint account with my husband. Can I leave half of it to my son from a previous marriage? 'I do all the yard work, cooking and cleaning': I live with my daughter and her lazy boyfriend. She wants me to buy her house. Do I say yes? 'Finance makes me break out in hives': I inherited $240K from my parents. Do I pay off my $258K mortgage and give up my job? My job is offering me a payout. Should I take a $61,000 lump sum — or $355 a month for life? Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
