Approximately 1.3 million minor children receive survivor benefits after the loss of a parent or parents who worked and paid Social Security taxes. The benefit can be life changing.
Heather Hill knows this firsthand. She showed me some pictures of her late husband Jonathan. He was with their three children in the cockpit of the commercial aircraft he flew for JetBlue. “He just looks so proud there, doesn’t he?” she said.
Heather played a video of him taken at a party with a handheld camera, where they lived outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. “Here we go. This is my favorite part,” she said.
A friend off-camera asks her husband if he had anything to say to his wife. “I love her,” Jonathan responded.
Jonathan died unexpectedly from an aortic rupture in 2014 at age 43. He was at work — in between flights on layover in San Diego. Heather says his death was a complete shock. At the time, their children were ages 6, 7 and 9. “Right where you’re sitting on that couch, on my couch is where I had to tell them what happened to their dad,” she recalled.
Back in 2014, Heather had just started an apprenticeship as a funeral director. And she didn’t know how she would pay the bills on just one income.
“Not only am I grieving the death of my husband, I’m also now the sole provider,” she said. “I was working part time, and so the panic comes in with, ‘How am I going to support my family? How am I going to pay my mortgage?’”
Her boss at the funeral home suggested she get in touch with the local Social Security office. Because Jonathan had paid into Social Security throughout his career, Heather qualified for survivor benefits for herself and their children. It came to about $4,000 a month while her kids were young. The money was a financial lifeline. “I wouldn’t have been able to continue on at the level that I was able to without them,” she said. The money was “life saving.”
Her monthly checks got smaller as each kid turned eighteen. These days, as a funeral director, Heather is passionate about spreading the word about survivor benefits to widows and widowers. She tells them to get in touch with Social Security right away. “Get that appointment as soon as possible,” she said. “This is the information that you need to take with you.”
Heather’s passion for counseling widows and widowers with young children extends beyond the personal. She helps to educate funeral directors about how people can file for survivor benefits to make sure more families can access them after a loss.