Reduced rate NI contributions affecting widows

Lilli

Hi JuneBow - I can only gather from your quite comprehensive knowledge of the subject in question that you perhaps worked in some area of government. I am aware that once a woman started paying these reduced rate stamps they could continue should their husband die - are these the widows, perhaps, who were entitled to continue paying such stamps ? Also, I wouldn't put too much store in the computerised system even today, never mind more than 30 years ago, I think you'd maybe agree !!

JuneBow

Lilli wrote: »

I am aware that once a woman started paying these reduced rate stamps they could continue should their husband die - are these the widows, perhaps, who were entitled to continue paying such stamps ?

No, you did not have to have been paying NI at the reduced rate when your husband died to be entitled to continue to pay the contributions. You needed only to have an entitlement before 5.4.77 and to make the election by 12.5.77.
So esentially, it applied to all widows at the relevant date, not only to those who had already made the election.
I realise that this is not the answer you wanted, but I can only tell you what the rules were, and I don't know the reason behind the rules (who does). Logic does not always follow with pensions etc I am afraid.
Yes, I did work in retirement pensions around about that date, and I did get quite a few people kicking off at us because they did not agree with certain regulations - even though I tried to be as helpful as possible, and explain that I did not make the rules.
I note your comments about the computerised system, but am tellling you what I think, based on my experiences at the time. They were much less sophisticated than now, and that "error" would have been fairly fundamental to the system, and although I am not a computer programmer, I cannot see how it would not have been rejected. As I said, this is based on my experiences, I have no personal axe to grind, nor anything to gain from this. Pehaps you have different experiences.
Sorry I cannot give you the answer that you want.

margaretclare

JuneBow, I bow to your detailed knowledge of this topic. It was not one I had ever heard of before, this particular slant on the unfairness to married women perpetrated for 30 years between 1948 and 1978. My interest at that time was an active involvement in lobbying for change, partly about the 'married women's stamp', but also about married women's earnings being treated as their husband's for tax purposes. I had a file of letters going back some 20 years before the Equal Opportunities Commission took it up. Success only came with the Budget of 1990 when independent taxation of each individual was introduced. I may have played a tiny part in that success, since I got to speak to the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. But he had already been persuaded.

Obviously the OP is better off claiming against her late husband's contributions because she can claim the 100% SRP, £90.70 a week currently. She would be worse off if she remarried, because she would then get 60% against her new husband's contributions. This is not very nice, is it - it could act as a disincentive to remarry although I read recently that a lot of older people are getting married!

Sorry to digress a bit, Lilli.

Lilli

The problem I, and of course anyone else in a similar situation have, is that as my husband died without completing his obligatory period of contributions, 60% of the pension he would be entitled to is negligable. I have only 12 years attributed to my record (having lost 20 years paying small stamp).