Have you ever sat down and tried to calculate the true cost of your divorce — not just the lawyer bills and the house, but the years of retirement income quietly shifting away from you? It’s a question most people never think to ask until it’s almost too late.
When I sat down with Tommy Bianchi at a diner near his rental apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, he was nursing a black coffee and a three-year-old grudge against a legal system he feels left him holding the bag. Tommy is 46, an HVAC technician who has worked the same trade for over two decades. He is not someone who talks about Social Security at dinner parties. But on a Tuesday afternoon in early March, he talked about almost nothing else.
The Financial Wreckage He Was Still Climbing Out Of
Tommy’s divorce was finalized in the spring of 2023, after 14 years of marriage. He walked away without the house, with $22,000 in legal fees charged to two credit cards, and with a court order requiring him to pay $1,600 per month in child support for his two children, now ages 10 and 13.
That child support obligation represents roughly 25 percent of his gross monthly income — a number that leaves almost no room for saving, let alone for the down payment on a house he keeps telling himself he’ll buy someday. He’s been in the same two-bedroom rental for three years.
“Every other weekend I pick up the kids,” Tommy told me, stirring his coffee slowly. “And I want them to feel like their dad has it together, you know? So I take them to the movies, we eat out. I spend money I don’t have. And then Monday comes around and I feel like an idiot.”
He described it as a cycle he couldn’t seem to break — what he himself called “stress-spending” during visits, followed by days of anxiety about the credit card statements waiting at home. He’s been carrying a balance for three years straight.
What Sent Him to the Social Security Administration
The call that changed things happened almost by accident. Tommy had called a benefits helpline in February after a coworker mentioned something vague about disability insurance. He was curious about what would happen to his child support obligations if he ever got injured on the job — HVAC work is physical, and at 46, he has already had two shoulder procedures.
What he got was a longer conversation than he bargained for.
According to the Social Security Administration, a divorced spouse who was married for at least 10 years may be eligible to claim benefits based on their former spouse’s earnings record — provided they are 62 or older, currently unmarried, and meet other SSA criteria. Tommy had been married for 14 years. His ex-wife, who is 44, would potentially qualify to claim against his record when she reaches 62, assuming she remains unmarried.
Tommy’s first reaction, he told me, was anger. His second was something closer to resignation.
The Part That Actually Helped Him — His Kids
The section of the conversation that shifted Tommy’s thinking wasn’t about his ex-wife at all. It was about his children.
Under SSA rules, minor children of a Social Security beneficiary may be eligible to receive auxiliary benefits — up to 50 percent of the worker’s primary insurance amount — if the worker begins receiving retirement or disability benefits. According to the SSA’s disability benefits page, this applies to children under 18, or under 19 if still in high school.
Tommy’s kids are 10 and 13. If he were approved for Social Security Disability Insurance today, both children could potentially receive monthly auxiliary payments. Those payments, importantly, can sometimes be credited toward a parent’s child support obligation — though that depends entirely on state law and the specific court order, something Tommy was told to verify with a family law attorney.
“Nobody told me that,” Tommy said quietly, setting down his mug. “Nobody in the whole divorce process — not my lawyer, not anybody — mentioned that if I ever got hurt, my kids could get something from Social Security. That’s their dad’s record. That belongs to them.”
What His Social Security Statement Actually Showed
After the phone call, Tommy created an account on SSA’s my Social Security portal and pulled up his earnings statement for the first time. He had worked continuously since age 22, accumulating well over the 40 credits required for full retirement eligibility.
His projected retirement benefit at age 67 — his full retirement age — came in at approximately $2,100 per month in today’s dollars, based on his current earnings trajectory. At 62, that figure would drop to roughly $1,470 per month if he claimed early. At 70, delayed credits would push it closer to $2,600.
Tommy stared at those numbers differently than he expected to. He told me his first thought wasn’t about retirement — it was about what those figures meant for his ex-wife’s potential claim, and whether that would reduce what he eventually received.
The answer, according to SSA policy, is no. A divorced spouse’s benefit is paid from a separate pool and does not reduce the worker’s own retirement benefit. Tommy said that was the first genuinely good news he had heard in months.
The Regret He Couldn’t Quite Let Go Of
By the time I asked Tommy what he wished he had known sooner, he had finished two cups of coffee and was watching a table of retirees across the diner compare Medicare supplement plans.
“I was so focused on surviving the divorce — the lawyers, the court dates, the custody stuff — that I never once thought about the long game,” he said. “Nobody put a benefits counselor in that room. Nobody said, ‘Hey, here’s what this means for your Social Security in twenty years.’ That conversation didn’t happen.”
He’s not wrong that it rarely does. Divorce proceedings in the United States focus almost exclusively on the immediate financial division — assets, debts, custody, and support. Long-term federal benefit implications are frequently overlooked, left to the individual to piece together years later.
Tommy hasn’t changed much about his day-to-day life since the call. He still spends too much on those weekends with his kids — he told me he’s aware of it, and he doesn’t entirely want to stop. “Those are the best days I have,” he said simply. “I’ll figure out the money.”
Whether he does or doesn’t, something shifted in how he sees his financial future. Not fixed — but mapped. He knows where things stand, and for the first time in three years, he said, that feels like something.
Sitting in that diner, watching him watch the retirees, I thought about how many people in his exact situation — mid-40s, post-divorce, financially stretched — have never once opened an SSA account or had the conversation he stumbled into. The information is there. It just doesn’t come looking for you.
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