Social Security Death Benefits and WEP

Hi Terry, I briefly talked with you on WGN radio today, 8/20/2025, but I was not able to convey my problem to you. I am a current retired teacher, 66 yrs old, and I receive a pension from the State of Illinois’s Teacher Retirement. In 2017 my husband passed away and I was still working. I went to Social Security to report it and to see if I would qualify for any benefits at that date. I was still teaching , but I did not qualify, but they did send me a few hundred dollars for his death. Now fast forward to January 2025, and the WEP was voted on. I immediately called Social Security again to see if now I would qualify for my spouse’s death benefits. They took all my information and said that they did not have the new forms in yet so they had to override some of the questions, but I would receive the Social Security Death benefit for my husband in February of 2025, which I did. It is around $1,700 because I am having taxes taken out of it. I asked at that time if I would be getting a retroactive check for 2024. They said they did not know when they would be distributed. April came and I called my local Social Security office again. The person who took my call just said I’m not entitled to it. I emailed my local Congressman’s office (Foster)who contacted Social Security and had someone again from that office tell me that I did not qualify for the retroactive payment because when I first went into the Social Security office in January 2017 they should have filled out a death benefit for me, in which I would have received a letter stating that I did not qualify for it at the time. (They verbally told me that in 2017, but never said anything about a form.) Now I’m hearing teacher friends that have applied for Spousal Social Security months later than I had and they have received retroactive checks. I also know another teacher who is also receiving Spousal Death Benefits and she also go to a retroactive check for 2024. Any thoughts?