Pensioner financial help

comeandgo

Can anyone advise me on what help is available for widowed pensioner please? My mum does not have enough qualifying years to get much of a pension on her own. About £60 a week but I was hoping this would increase to the basic single pension £110 due to my late fathers nic contributions? Also, I remember that any cash under £10 k is ignored for benefits. My mum seems to think if you have £16k in the bank you are not entitled to any other benefits? Is this correct?
Dad left some sort of policy that will either pay a full and final amount or a monthly amount. It's not very much but don't want to suggest she does one thing when in fact I may be making her worse off financially.
Thank you.

pmlindyloo

How old is your mum?

pmlindyloo

Sorry to hear of the loss of your dad.

Looking at your other thread, did your mum and dad apply for Pension Credit?

Pension Credit is unlike other benefits in that it does not have a threshold as regards savings.

You can have up to £10000 in savings and any amount over that is deducted £1 for every £500 (or part of) over the £10000 from your pension credit. Even if you get a small amount of Pension Credit it entitles you to HB and CT support up to the maximum of your mum's personal circumstances. So it is a good benefit to apply for.

State/occupational pensions are all counted as income for assessment purposes.

I think the best thing to do is to wait until your mum knows what she is going to get as a state pension and then play around with the calculator
on https://www.entitledto.co.uk to see if it is better for her to take the lump sum from your dad's policy or the monthly amount.

It rather depends on her circumstances.

If she is renting, for example, then if the monthly amount from the policy takes her over the limit for Pension Credit then she will probably be better off going for the lump sum so she can retain her eligibility for HB.

Hope that doesn't sound too complicated.

CAB or the Pension Service may be able to help with the 'sums'.

help4help2013

is your mum over 65?

comeandgo

Hi sorry for the lack of replies this weekend. Yes, my mum is over 65 and I,ve found out there was a pension credit part to dad's pension. We have told dwp that dad died but they have still paid pension which will have to be repaid.

xylophone

http://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/state-pensions/death-benefits
http://www.ageuk.org.uk/money-matters/claiming-benefits/pension-credit/

The above have relevant information.