retired houswife pension entitlement

jabba21

Am enquiring on behalf of my parents, my mum is 67 and apart from the odd bit of part time work and a lot of voluntary work has devoted herself to raising us two and running a home. My dad is 64 and has pretty much worked full time all his life up until about two years ago when he stopped work due to illness. He is still technically employed but is unlikely to return to work and will probably have to consider retiring this year.
So far they are surviving on partial sick pay and savings, but they tell me that my mum is not entitled to any kind of pension as she has not paid enough "stamp" during her working life. This seems wrong, surely many women of her generation went the "have kids young / hubby always the breadwinner" route, are they all going to be solely dependent their husband's pension? Surely raising kids and running a home has some value attached to it in the government's eyes?
What little I have been able to find out seems to suggest that claiming family allowance while we were growing up has some bearing, also that she can claim something on the basis that my dad has worked all his life? The fact she is 68 this year and not received anything other than a bus pass, can she claim anything backdated?
My dad probably won't have the long and healthy retirement all of us hope for, but I would hate his last few years to be spent just getting by. Knowing my dad he will be insured up to the eyeballs when he goes but that is just all jam tomorrow.
Any thoughts or useful links would be much appreciated, most info i have found has been geared toward those planning retirement.

xylophone

Your father will qualify for his state pension before 6 April 2016?

See https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/state-pensions

"Under the current State Pension scheme, if you’re a woman and you don’t qualify for a full basic State Pension (perhaps because you took time off work to look after your children), you may be able to claim a higher amount based on your husband’s National Insurance contributions and get a basic State Pension of up to 60% of his. If he receives the full basic State Pension, you would therefore be entitled to £67.80 a week (2014-15 tax year) – as shown in the table above.

Husbands and civil partners with spouses or partners born on or after 6 April 1950 can also claim a State Pension based on their partner’s record.

If you’re claiming on your husband’s, wife’s or civil partner’s record, you don’t need to wait for them to start drawing their own State Pension before you can claim, but you must both have reached State Pension age. You also don’t need to be living together in order to claim."

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-1616017/Womens-pensions-Home-Responsibilities-Protection.html

https://www.gov.uk/home-responsibilities-protection-hrp might be of interest.

Did your mother claim state pension at her state pension age?
https://www.gov.uk/state-pension/how-to-claim

McKneff

Surely mother couldn't claim any sort of pension (if she had paid no NI of her own)
she would have to wait till father hit pension age.

xylophone

Surely mother couldn't claim any sort of pension (if she had paid no NI of her own)
she would have to wait till father hit pension age.

It is not clear whether mother has ever paid NI ( job before having children/part time work after) or whether she had home responsibilities protection (after 1978).

She could have checked out her position when she reached SPA (around 2008?) and could still check now if she has not done so.

If she is not entitled to any pension in her own right, then the position will be as outlined in my post above.

xylophone

And the OP's father can get a state pension statement.

https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-statement

If father has an occupational pension, he might be able to take it early on the basis of his ill health.

molerat

The fly in the ointment for HRP is the married women's stamp.

McKneff

Married womans stamp and HRP are two entirely different things.....

greenglide

But to qualify for HRP you used to (and may still have to) have paid full rate contributions before the protection started.

If you werent paying contributions before, what is there to "protect".

JezR

Yes, paying the married woman's stamp precluded entitlement to HRP.

The OP seems to have fallen down possibly both of the two biggest holes for women in the historic state pension system - not paying full stamp if she had any employment, and being some years older than her husband. If the ages had been reversed she would have been in receipt of a class B pension for 2 years or so already.

lijaloo

Greenglide is correct you do not receive HRP if there was an election to pay lower married woman's rate national insurance.

jackyann

Jabba, I think your mum may have been caught between 2 stools, or even 3. I agree with the advice to get statements, but here's the historical position:

If a woman did not pay her own "stamp" she is not entitled to a State pension.
A married couple's pension could be claimed on the breadwinner's pension record, but only when he gets to pension age.

Up to 1977 some women paid a cheaper "married woman's stamp" which entitled them to basic NI benefits, but not a pension in their own right. This was abolished, and replaced in 1978 by "family responsibilities payment" so that a parent staying at home with young children could be credited with a stamp. The exact ages have changed over the years.

So: your mum might have paid in a few years before she had children; she might be entitled to some family responsibility credits depending on what ages the children were at what point. These need checking individually.

A number of women of this age group feel aggrieved that the situation was not explained properly to them, and I think your mother falls into this group. Some of them believed their husbands were "paying the stamp" for them, but this was not the case.
My mother (born 1927) paid a voluntary stamp whilst not working in order to claim her own pension. She advised me to do the same, but I got protected by the family responsibilities credits. She was well informed and I remember her talking to her friends about it, but I know that many of them disregarded her advice and were then surprised to find she was correct!
I am sorry that your mother did not take steps to protect her own pension rights.

She will be entitled to some claims on the basis of your dad's record, and you can help by checking these out. Local CAB / Help the Aged or Turn2us online are all helpful, but you do need an individual forecast for both from gov.uk (if they haven't already done this)