State pension for women

brodev

My wife has just started receiving the state pension. She only has 32 years qualifying therefore does not get the full pension. Does anyone know if, when the new rules come into effect reducing the qualifying period to 30 years instead of 39, she will get full pension?

Be_Happy

I'm no expert on this, so someone may come on and tell me I'm wrong However as I'm due to be in the same position re no full pension soon, I've been reading up on this and my understanding is that it won't be backdated and the reduction in qualifying years will only apply to women retiring after the new rules come in. I've been paying voluntary contributions for the last 3 years to bring up my pension to 88%, but it seems that's as good as it gets.

CIS

The new rules come in sometime after 2010, for people retiring only after that date.

Although the report doesn't state it specifically, its probably a good bet that the lower qualifying years will be phased in rather than create an overnight problem where a person with , say, 42yrs doesn't get 100%, but someone retiring a day later gets 100% with 30yrs.

margaretclare

brodev wrote:

My wife has just started receiving the state pension. She only has 32 years qualifying therefore does not get the full pension. Does anyone know if, when the new rules come into effect reducing the qualifying period to 30 years instead of 39, she will get full pension?

Is it possible for your wife to 'buy' any of the missing years??

None of these changes are going to take effect immediately. 2010 and 2012 are the dates I've heard bandied about, and none of the changes, I've also heard, will affect any of the present generations of retirees, only the future ones.

Margaret Clare

flossy_splodge

Is it not possible that she can claim off your contributions? That's what I was told.:T

CIS

Apart from widows/divorcees, that option is only available to women with a basic pension less than 60% of the value of their husbands.

Milarky

CIS wrote:

Although the report doesn't state it specifically, its probably a good bet that the lower qualifying years will be phased in rather than create an overnight problem where a person with , say, 42yrs doesn't get 100%, but someone retiring a day later gets 100% with 30yrs.

I was going to say: "Want to bet?", but you're probably correct in that assumption - the number of years will need to fall from the current 39/44 (to age 65) years in stages.

..so the widespread assumption that someone (man 59 or woman 55) with 30 years today reaching state pension age after 2012 has already qualifed for that pension in full would appear to be wide of the mark.. they won't receive a full pension...

[Actually, the "You want to bet [something else they didn't consider before the announcement]?" probably does describe the reality... remembering how Gordon Brown announced payments to ''help pensioners with council tax'' which was paid simply on the basis of age and made no reference to whether the elderly person actually had a council tax bill!]

I've just down a quick search on the White Paper for this. Here is the clearest single statement it contains on this:

The_Govt,_in_its_White_Paper,_on_page_104 wrote:

We will:

• reduce the number of qualifying years needed for a full basic State pension from 44 for men and 39 for women to 30 for all those reaching State Pension age from 2010;

..."for all those reaching [SPA] from 2010" - whilst definitely not stating it is retrospective, that looks pretty unambiguous doesn't it? There's no wiggle room out of that one is there? It doesn't matter when you actually reach SPA as long as this is from any date later than [April 6th?] 2010. That could create exactly the precipice you envisage.

I'll bet that they haven't actually decided what they are going to do and that as soon as someone points out the implications the wheels will start to fall off the wagon.

CIS

I suspect the 'all' will be drop and then its all in the reading of the phrase 'from 2010', it could then be read both ways on the period of implementation.

I honestly believe that the 30yrs wont be brought in over night, but we'll not really know until someone has drawn up the drafts of how its all going to be implemented, for all we know, the system could yet be scrapped before its introduced.