state pension

mack1946

I am a 58 year old housewife and have not been in paid employment since 1969. I have had four children between the years of 1970 and 1980 is there anything I con do in the next two years to improve my state pension?

dunstonh

Get a form BR19 from the DSS. You should be able to download one from their website.

Send this in and they will give you a projection of pension entitlement. From that, you can decide if you need to do anything about it.

margaretclare

Hi Mack

When you were at work - i.e. pre-1969 - did you by any chance opt to pay the 'married women's smaller NI contribution' ?

If you didn't, then assuming you were receiving Child Benefit all the years your children were growing up, then you'll have been credited with NI contributions for all those years - what's called Home Responsibilities Protection. It doesn't apply for those paying the smaller NI contribution, which ceased in April 1975 but continued for those already on that option.

Margaret

Milarky

HRP only ran from the tax year 1978/79 up to the present. Someone paying the reduced NI would not qualify therefore for childcare in the earlier years. It's based on the childrens' ages, I understand, so the period of HRP in this case would be from 1978 [when the scheme began] up until the year when the youngest child cared for reached a certain age [I'm guessing left secondary education] Hope that helps.

Maximum HRP is 20 years [eg 2 children born 3 years apart and youngest stays on to 18...] What it does is reduce the number of 'qualifying years' need to receive a full pension for a carer [typically the mother]. For a female this can therefore be reduced from 39 to 19 qualifying years on full HRP. But this still requires the person concerned to have paid full-rate NI for 19 years, so does not quailify you for a pension as such. I think you need 10 years full NI for any kind of pension, and on full HRP [again I'm guessing] 10 years would give you about 50% [i.e. 10/19ths] of the basic state pension.

Some relief may come in the form of a 'citizens pension' as in New Zealand [i.e. scrapping the contributory principle and replacing it by a simple 'residency' test] which the new Pensions Secretary has heavily hinted he is inclined to adopt in the future. Only trouble with that is:

1) Gordon Brown is thought to disagree

2) The're a couple of blokes - and therefore predisposed to agrue rather than do what works

3) The new PS isn't likely to be around long enough to bring in a new type of pension rule. If we are lucky he will be there just long enough to make the decision -which a successor will then have to carry out.