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This story was originally published by The 19th.

Kathy Quitno-Bolt was still numb when she started calling Social Security days after her husband’s sudden death in July. Steve, her partner of 25 years and husband of 13, died four days after being diagnosed with lung cancer — just enough time for their daughter to arrive and say goodbye.

When she finally got through to someone, they told her they wouldn’t have an appointment to begin her application for survivor benefits until October.

Her head started spinning. Did she have enough saved to make it through then?

Survivor benefits could have stabilized Quitno-Bolt’s life when it felt like everything she knew was falling apart. But like many people across the country, she was facing significant delays at the Social Security Administration (SSA).

The agency hemorrhaged jobs in 2025, creating what advocates have described as a crisis of customer service. Since, it’s been taking weeks or months before some people can even get an appointment to receive their benefits, according to accounts by numerous advocates, attorneys and experts.

Social Security Changes Under Trump Led to Backlogs, Wait Times, and More Issues

Among those facing the longest delays are people claiming survivor benefits after the loss of a spouse and those applying on behalf of children who lost a parent. These groups are entitled to monthly payments that vary depending on the earnings of the worker who died and the age of the surviving spouse. There’s no online application for survivor benefits; they are at the mercy of the phones and the appointment calendar, which in the past year has become a logistical nightmare that has a disproportionate impact on women and children.

People with disabilities, too, have reported extensive delays to access Social Security disability payments because those applications typically require more interaction with agency staff.

After her first appointment in October, Quitno-Bolt submitted her documents, including her husband’s death certificate and their marriage license, to her local office thinking that was the end. But she heard nothing back for weeks. In November, she found out SSA had denied her benefits, saying she didn’t turn in her documents even though she had already received them back from the agency.

For the past four months now, she’s called the agency almost weekly trying to sort through what went wrong. Typically, she waits on hold for 70 to 90 minutes. At one point, she was told her application was closed without a denial or approval. More recently, she was told her second application was being processed. She’s still in limbo.

“It’s been a mess, and I can’t even think anymore because I’m so worried about everything,” said Quitno-Bolt, 57, who is disabled and can’t work. Her husband, a factory worker, was the breadwinner. A GoFundMe set up by her daughter helped her scrape by, but she said the last of her savings will run out this month.

“I was trying to stay busy and not think about the money, but you can’t do that, especially when you know that you deserve it, you know that it’s there,” she said.

Women with one or more children make up 92 percent of those seeking young survivors benefits. About 95 percent of those seeking “aged widows benefits,” for those over the age of 60, are also women. Because women tend to live longer and face pay disparities, they are more likely to rely on their spouse’s Social Security benefits.

An estimated 1.3 million children receive survivor benefits, and 1 in 10 children live in families that rely on Social Security payments to pay for bills, rent, food and other needs. When there are delays in timely benefits, children are among the ones who feel it the most.

Funeral director Heather Hill, a widow herself, has been counseling families through the process of obtaining survivor benefits since she lost her husband in 2014. For the families Hill works with, it can now take up to two months instead of a couple weeks before an appointment is available, which can be “devastating for a widow,” she said. When her husband died........

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