Pension and ill health

celinepatricia

My husband has a standard life pension.. he has recently been finished from his job due to ill health. we applied for his pension to be paid due to ill health reasons but they are refusing to pay it until his consultant states wether he would ever be fit enough to work again.
How can his consultant see into the future, and, even if he stated that yes he would be fit enough in the future, who would actually employ somebody who has already been finished for ill health..
Can they do this? I have sent them a copy of his letter from his employer terminating his employment.

dunstonh

How can his consultant see into the future, and, even if he stated that yes he would be fit enough in the future, who would actually employ somebody who has already been finished for ill health..
Can they do this?

It is pension legislation that requires a registered medical practitioner to make a judgement on the severity of the illness. So, yes they can do it and have to do it.

celinepatricia

his doctor has actually filled in the form but stated that they could not be certain if he would recover enough to be able to return to employment as they were not an expert in his medical problem.
He also has a Prudential pension and they have not had any problem accepting this and have agreed to pay the pension that he has with them.

dunstonh

How old is your husband?

celinepatricia

he is 53 (today actually)....

celinepatricia

Does his age make any difference?

LindsayO

celinepatricia wrote: »

My husband has a standard life pension.. he has recently been finished from his job due to ill health. we applied for his pension to be paid due to ill health reasons but they are refusing to pay it until his consultant states wether he would ever be fit enough to work again.
How can his consultant see into the future, and, even if he stated that yes he would be fit enough in the future, who would actually employ somebody who has already been finished for ill health..
Can they do this? I have sent them a copy of his letter from his employer terminating his employment.

the decision to terminate someone due to ill-health incapacity and the decision to give someone a pension due to ill-health can be taken independently, so yes, they can decide not to grant the pension even though he has been terminated due to ill-health

many pensions require that the ill-health incapacity be one that is permenant. Your husband's condition may be one that this can't be predicted, which means he might be left in some kind of limbo.

also the two pensions you mention may have different rules about ill-health, so one could grant the pension on the basis of information that the other one does not.

you should be able to get a hold of the pensions rules governing each of these pensions and find out what their requirements are for ill-health pensions.

celinepatricia

Thanks for that... I will have a look into it. just seemed a bit odd that when i have spoken to them they said it was some government rule so i presumed if that was it the government rule would be the same for both pensions. Maybe i got the wrong end of the stick!!!

dunstonh

celinepatricia wrote: »

Does his age make any difference?

Yes. It can make the difference between requiring a medical sign off or not. i.e. after age 55 there is no requirement for them to get a registered medical practitioner. The trustees can make the decision for themselves.

zzzLazyDaisy

Some pensions are 'own occupation' pensions and some are 'any occupation'

So, if for example a person who digs holes in roads had a degenerative back condition and is no longer able to do his job, an 'own occupation' pension would pay out, whereas an 'any occupation' one may not (or not without more information) as his condition may not prevent him from doing some other, less physical job, for example.

Also the younger a person is, the longer until retirement age and the bigger the expense to the insurer, which may mean that they look at it more closely.