What Your Spouse Receives If You Die

“What does my spouse get?” has two different answers, and which one applies depends on nothing more than whether the death happens before or after the retirement date. They are not variations on a theme — they are separate benefits, computed under separate subsections, and they are not close in size.

One career, priced both ways: a FERS employee aged 62 and 6 months, high-3 of $105,000, currently earning $108,000, with 22 years of creditable service and 1,200 hours of unused sick leave, considering the full 50% survivor election.

If the death happens in service

Under 5 U.S.C. § 8442(b)(1), a spouse receives two things. The first is a lump sum: 50% of the final annual rate of basic pay (or of the high-3, if higher) plus an indexed amount that started at $15,000 in 1987 and is adjusted by every CSRS cost-of-living increase since. As of December 2025 that indexed part is $43,800.53. On this career the lump sum is $97,800.53 — $54,000 plus the indexed amount.

The second, for an employee with at least 10 years of service, is a survivor annuity of 50% of the annuity the employee had earned: $11,812.50 a year, or $984.38 a month. Three features of that computation are worth naming, because each one is a specific reading of the statute rather than a rounding:

• No age reduction. § 8415(h)(1) reduces the annuity of an employee “retiring under section 8412(g) or 8413(b)”. A death is neither, so the reduction never attaches — the handbook computes it as if the employee had retired optionally on the date of death.
• No election cost. Nothing is deducted from anyone’s annuity to fund it. There is no annuity to deduct from.
• But no 1.1% factor, ever. § 8415(i)(2)(A) reserves the enhanced factor to an employee who retires entitled to an annuity. Someone who dies at a desk has not retired, so this career — 62 years old with 22 years of service, which would have earned 1.1% on a retirement — is computed at 1%.

Unused sick leave counts on this path too. § 8415(m)(1)(A) credits it to an employee who retires on an immediate annuity or who dies leaving a survivor entitled to an annuity — the survivor clause is in the statute itself, not an extension of the retirement rule.

If the death happens after retirement

Now the survivor annuity is whatever the retiree elected and paid for. The full election under § 8442(a)(1) pays the spouse 50% of the retiree’s unreduced annuity, and § 8419(a) funds it by reducing that annuity by 10% for life.

On the same career, retiring today: the annuity is computed at 1.1% because the employee did retire — $25,987.50 a year — so the survivor receives $12,993.75 a year, or $1,082.81 a month. The election costs the retiree $2,598.75 a year, $216.56 a month, from the day they retire until the day they die.

Putting the two side by side

Retiring first buys the spouse $98.44 a month more survivor annuity. It also costs the retiree $216.56 a month for as long as they live, and it gives up a lump sum of $97,800.53 that only a death in service pays. At $1,181.25 a year of extra survivor annuity, the lump sum alone is worth more than eighty years of the difference.

This is the one place on this site where the arithmetic says something uncomfortable: for a household, dying at work is worth considerably more than dying a week into retirement. That is not a reason to do anything differently. It is a reason to know which benefit your family is currently standing on, because the two are funded and priced in completely different ways and the switch happens on a single day.

Three things the election is not

It is not 25% for 5%. § 8419 contains no such option. The partial election is the same 10%-for-50% trade run over half the annuity: your spouse receives 25% of the full annuity and the cost is 5% of it. Two ways of describing one arithmetic, not two products.

It is not revisitable. The election is made at retirement. Outside narrow windows tied to a change in marital status, it is the decision you keep.

It is not only about money. A surviving spouse keeps FEHB coverage only if they are receiving a survivor annuity. Declining the election, or electing an amount that later lapses, ends the health insurance with it — which is frequently the larger loss and the one that surprises families most.

Sources

• 5 U.S.C. § 8442 — survivor annuities: death of an annuitant at (a), death in service at (b). Text of § 8442
• 5 U.S.C. § 8419 — the reduction that funds a survivor election. Text of § 8419
• OPM CSRS/FERS Handbook, Chapter 70 — spouse benefits on the death of an employee, including the no-age-reduction computation at § 70B3.1-2A. Chapter 70 (PDF)
• OPM Benefits Administration Letter 26-101 — the current value of the indexed $15,000 death benefit. Benefits Administration Letters

The figures above are computed by lib/fers-survivor.js on the career described, and the indexed death benefit is re-announced by OPM each autumn — the value here is the one payable for deaths on or after 1 December 2025. Children’s benefits, former-spouse court orders and the CSRS rules are all outside this guide.

This guide is informational only. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice, and FedAnnuity is not affiliated with OPM or the U.S. government. Retirement rules turn on the specific facts of a career, and only your agency and OPM can give you a binding figure.

Last reviewed: August 2026 · Against 5 U.S.C. §§ 8442, 8419 and 8415, and OPM Handbook Chapter 70.